Fabulous 40s Christmas Light Installation

On a December evening in the Fab 40s, a carriage, a brew bike and a tuk-tuk full of people in scarves might all roll past your front lawn before you’ve finished your cocoa. That’s a lot of eyes on one house. Fabulous 40s Christmas light installation is for homeowners in this corner of East Sacramento who want the place looking sharp for the crowd without giving up a weekend to a ladder.

The lights route covers 40th to 49th Streets between J Street and Folsom Boulevard, and 44th Street is the traditional core of it. Local guides trace the tradition back to the 1980s, and the displays run sunset to midnight every night. People see your house slowly here. They’re on foot, or riding at carriage speed, and they stop to point. A sagging line, a dark dormer or an orange cord across the grass gets noticed by a few thousand strangers.

So we fuss over the small stuff. Lines sit straight along the eave. Cords get tucked beside flower beds and downspouts. And we set a timer so your lights come on at dusk with everybody else’s and click off at midnight, when the block goes quiet.

The 40s are the grand end of East Sacramento: large early-20th-century homes, many of them two stories, plenty with later remodels and additions stacked on. That gives you peaks, dormers, cross gables and roof pitches that would make a goat nervous. It also gives you a great outline. Roofline lights on a steep front gable or a tall two-story front look best when they follow every peak, not only the gutter. Our clips ride the gutter lip or tuck under a shingle. Old trim gets no nails and no staples, and the walls get no drill.

Tell us on the phone, at (916) 313-4551, how many stories you’ve got and which peaks face the street. The high ones are a ladder job for us, not for you.

Front lawns run deep in this part of town, and the streets are wide. 46th Street at J was once a streetcar turnaround, which tells you how much room there is. A house set that far back needs more than a roof outline, or all anyone sees is a string of dots a long way off.

• Tree wraps. The street canopy is mature and tall, so we wrap trunks and the lower limbs where people can see them. Wraps go on snug, never tight, and nothing gets fastened into bark. One deodar cedar in the neighborhood is more than 100 years old. Trees like that get gentle handling.
• Stake lighting next to the front walk and the lawn edge, kept off the sprinkler heads. It also shows visitors where the lawn starts, which is a polite hint.
• Pillar and column wraps for porch columns and entry posts, wound to the same count on both sides so the two spirals match.
• Lit wreaths on the front door and centered in upstairs windows, where they show from across a wide street.
• Lit garland around the entry, on a porch rail or over an arched doorway.

Every piece arrives on our truck, so your shopping list stays empty. If your trees deserve top billing, our tree wrapping page goes deeper.

There’s no homeowners association on these blocks, so nobody hands you a calendar for when Christmas lights are allowed up or have to come down. The neighborhood’s own tradition does the nudging. If you’d like to be lit when the tours start rolling, book early in the fall at (916) 313-4551, because install days go quickly once the weather cools. The quieter blocks of East Sacramento outside the route have a page of their own.

Quotes happen by phone. You can also text or email us pictures of the street side, or send them through our contact page, and we’ll quote off those. Call (916) 313-4551 to start. Should part of the display go dark some December night, with the carriages rolling by, the same number gets it relit. Then in January we’re back to strip it all and cart it away. Your garage keeps its shelf space.

We light homes all over Sacramento, but this is the one neighborhood where the passersby grade your work. Let’s hand them something good.

Do the Fabulous 40s have an HOA deadline for Christmas lights?

No. The Fab 40s have no homeowners association, so no association dictates your start date or your takedown date. We remove everything in January as part of the job.

Can my lights follow the sunset to midnight hours the neighborhood keeps?

Yes. We set a timer so the display comes on around dusk and goes off at midnight, and we can adjust it if you’d like different hours.

My house is two stories with a very steep roof. Can you light the peaks?

Usually, yes. Describe the roof on the phone or send photos of the front, and we’ll tell you which peaks and gables we can outline and how. All the ladder work is ours.

When do you install, with all the evening traffic on 44th Street?

We work in daylight, well ahead of the carriages and walkers, so trucks and ladders are gone by the time the evening crowd arrives.

Which streets are on the Fab 40s lights route?

The Sacramento Bee describes it as 40th to 49th Streets between J Street and Folsom Boulevard, with 44th Street as the traditional core. Lights run from sunset to midnight.