Friday, December 12, 2008

Lights

Ryan and I are trying to ready our house for this Farley Family Christmas, and we've run into a snag. We bought Christmas lights to hang on the front of our house, and now we can't figure out how to hang them. At its tallest, the house is roughly 30 feet tall, and our ladder goes to 17 feet. Every square inch of the roof is downwardly slanted at a dangerous angle to the point that Ryan got up on the only accessible portion of the roof via our ladder, and he almost couldn't get back down. We had to reposition the ladder and anchor it against a bush. Adena told us that Chad recommended using a chicken ladder (and that does appear to be the proper name for it), but if you looked long and hard at our roof you would understand why there's no way that's going to work. You can't even get up on the awning over the door and stand up enough to try to hook a 12-18 foot ladder over the closer of the two tall points, and nevermind trying to hook it over the taller of the two. I got home from picking up Lara today and looked across the street, and some guys were doing roofy things on the house across and down the street which is cookie-cuttered with the same cutter that ours is. They had a ladder that must have been 50 feet tall positioned from the ground at an angle all the way up past the top of the roof, and when they would climb up it, no one dared actually attempt to climb on the roof. They just hung onto the ladder and sprayed leaves out of the gutters with a long leaf blower, or whatever it was they were doing. There's no way to get from the accessible part of the roof to the top of it to anchor yourself. So unless we can find someone who has a 50-foot ladder or else come up with a new type of brainstorm, I'm afraid we may not be using our awesome lights. Sad day.

10 comments:

Colleen said...

So don't aim for the roof. Just do the lights around the entrance, the front windows, and the garage doors. That will be festive enough - and doable. you could even possibly put lights around the upstairs windows, though you'd have to be careful on how you hang them from inside the windows. your roof line is way to steep to do anything else.

Shannon said...

That's it, Christmas is off. There's no way I can celebrate in a lightless house.

If we had put up lights on our house last year, I was going to tape them to the inside of the window so that you can see them from the outside. This renders the window useless, of course, but whatever. Or, you could do what one of our neighbors does and put one big light (like a candle but fake) in each window and it looks really pretty.

Or, just stand on the ground and throw them onto the roof with a hook and hope for the best :)

Carynanne said...

Well, Ryan raced home today to try to figure it all out. We came up with an elaborate plan where we would buy a 100-foot rope and tie it to the fence on one side of the house, then throw it over the roof spike and Ryan could use it to climb to the top, then we'd do the same thing on the other side. I'm pretty sure it would've killed him. At any rate, we nixed it and just put the lights up in a straight line about 10 feet up from the ground. So at least we have lights.

BTW I actually have those candle things in my windows, too. They have light sensors, so they turn themselves on when it's dark. The house doesn't look half bad, really-- maybe not as cool as the people's houses who happen to own 50-foot ladders, but certainly cooler than our house looked last year with nuttin.

Mrs. F said...

Our house is not even that steep and Josh almost fell off the roof and died last year trying to put the lights up on the second story.

I would have let him do it again this year, but he is not worth enough in insurance monies, so there is that.

Adena said...

Well, seeing as you already have the job done, this probably won't matter until next year (if at all) but I'm fairly certain you can rent a ladder that big.

Also, I bet you money Chad will get there and roll his eyes about the "steepness" of the roof (I'm sure he'll also LOVE that I'm soliciting his fearlessness, too).

Carynanne said...

We'll welcome Chad's advice. However, if we rented a ladder that tall, how would we get it here and back? With the civic or the saturn compact sedan? Ryan called all around for someone who rented roof equipment and no one could tell him where to get it. So I don't know what else we could have done.

But at least no one died.

Anonymous said...

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1. William (Bill) Farley can sneeze with his eyes open.
2. William (Bill) Farley can eat just one Lay's potato chip.
3. William (Bill) Farley destroyed the periodic table, because he only recognizes the element of surprise.
4. William (Bill) Farley can kill two stones with one bird.
5.Some people like to eat frogs' legs. William (Bill) Farley likes to eat lizard legs. Hence, snakes.

6.There are no races, only countries of people William (Bill) Farley has beaten to different shades of black and blue.

7. When William (Bill) Farley was denied an Egg McMuffin at McDonald's because it was 10:35, he roundhouse kicked the store so hard it became a Wendy's.

Shannon said...

Where can one locate this anomaly, this outstanding specimen of perfection that you call William (Bill) Farley?

ps. Anonymous, if you had just figured out how to get the lights up yourself, we wouldn't be in the midst of this crisis.

Carynanne said...

William (Billy) Farley sounds like he's related to Chuck Norris.

Anonymous said...

William (Bill) Farley is chuck Norris!