Hang holiday lights on gutters, stucco and Victorian trim without damage

Before you open the box of lights, walk out to the sidewalk and look at where your roof meets the sky. On a lot of San Francisco blocks there is no gutter there. A Sunset house ends in a stucco parapet over a flat roof, an Italianate Victorian in a bracketed wood cornice, and the clips on the package were made for neither. Get the surface right and the rest follows.

#Read the roofline before you buy a single clip

San Francisco's houses went up in waves, and each wave finished the top of the front wall its own way. SF Planning's survey of Sunset builders lists a flat roof and an ornamented parapet among the features nearly all of the district's single-family houses share, from the mid-1920s to 1950. Italianates are known for bracketed cornices and false fronts, and Stick-style roofs usually pitch behind parapets, according to the city's Preservation Bulletin 18. None of that offers a lip for a gutter clip.

Plenty of ranch houses and newer tracts around the Bay do have the shingled eave and hanging gutter the packages show. Answer one question for each stretch you plan to light, and let the answer pick the clip.

#Which clip goes on which surface

One rule runs through every row: the house should look in January the way it did in November. Only the last resort for wood trim needs a hole, and that one is small, hidden and reused every year.

#Stucco: the surface that punishes shortcuts

Stucco is the skin of the Sunset, and SF Planning's survey describes the cladding of several of its period styles as smooth or textured, often thickly. Texture defeats adhesive. 3M's help pages say its Command products are not recommended for heavily textured surfaces, because the adhesive may not make full contact, or for brick and rough concrete (Command FAQs). On smooth, sound, painted stucco, outdoor clips applied clean and dry can last the season. On a heavy sand or lace finish, don't count on them.

The next thing people reach for is a drill. Put it down: every hole in stucco is a new path for water, and water behind stucco works where nobody looks until the paint bubbles. Tape lets go in the cold and wet. Hot glue holds, and on painted stucco it can take the paint with it when it comes off.

On a Sunset front, stop asking the wall to hold the lights. Outline the bay window and the window heads, wrap the stair rail and the gate, trace the garage trim, and leave the parapet dark or wash it from below with an outdoor-rated spotlight. It reads as festive from across the street, and January is just unclipping.

#Victorian trim, cornices and stair rails

A Victorian front is mostly wood. Bulletin 18 describes Italianates by their bracketed cornices and hooded doorways, Eastlake fronts by incised brackets and turned work, Queen Annes by shingles and decorated vergeboards. That wood is old and painted many times over. Staples split it, nails leave holes that take in rain, and a hole in end grain is where rot starts; the dry rot guide shows where that leads.

If you light the same house every year, put the hardware in once. Small screw hooks, predrilled into sound wood under the cornice or on top of each window hood and painted to match, are invisible from the sidewalk and hold a string through every storm. That is a small carpentry job worth doing once instead of improvising with a staple gun each year.

Stair rails are the easiest part of a front to light. Iron rails on Sunset stairs and turned balusters on a Victorian stoop take zip ties without a mark. Tie the string, never the plug, keep connections above the treads, and leave the top of the handrail clear for the hand that needs it. The aging-in-place guide explains why that matters more than any light.

#Power, rain and the one outlet out front

Lights go up as the rainy season gets going, and on September 10 NOAA's Climate Prediction Center gave a very strong El Niño better than 90% odds this fall and winter (CPC). ESFI's outdoor rules are short: cords and decorations marked for outdoor use, amperage matched to the cord, a GFCI-protected circuit or a portable outdoor GFCI, and cords and strings kept clear of standing water (ESFI).

1. Read the tags

   Strings, cords and timers should all be marked for outdoor use. Anything unmarked stays inside.

2. Check every set

   Look for broken or cracked sockets, frayed or bare wire and loose connections, on new sets and old, as the CPSC advises. A damaged set doesn't go up.

3. Count before you connect

   The CPSC's limit is three sets of incandescent lights strung together. LED sets print their own limit on the tag or box.

4. Lift every connection

   Plugs and joints stay off the ground and out of planters, gutters and the splash zone of a downspout.

5. Add a timer

   ESFI says to turn decorations off before you leave home or go to sleep. A timer remembers for you.

If the nearest outlet is in the garage, the tempting route runs under the door, which crushes the cord every time it closes. ESFI's extension cord brochure warns against cords pinched in doorways and against nailing or stapling them to any surface, and its outdoor tips say the same of windows.

#The ladder is where December goes wrong

Set an extension ladder so its foot sits a quarter of its working length out from the wall: 16 feet of ladder up to the top support puts the foot 4 feet out. If you'll step onto a roof or landing, the rails must reach at least 3 feet above it, and nobody stands on the top three rungs. Climb facing the ladder with three points of contact. Never lean a folded stepladder on the wall or use one half-open (OSHA).

Look up before you raise anything. If a power line runs to your roofline, keep yourself and the ladder at least 10 feet away, and use wood or fiberglass outdoors, since metal conducts electricity (ESFI). And keep the ladder off the gutter: a loaded ladder dents aluminum, a dent holds water, and a standoff that bears on the wall leaves the lip free for clips.

#Renters, condos and shared walls

This is general information, not legal advice. Leases, CC&Rs and house rules differ, and the one you signed controls. The move-out guide covers what counts as wear and tear.

#Taking it down in January without a mark

Lights come down the way they went up, in reverse, on a dry day. One tug on a string to save a trip up the ladder can bend a gutter lip or pop a whole run of clips.

Every clip on the house should let go in January as easily as it held on in December.