The Highlands was built to look at the valley, so the glass and the height both went to the downhill side. A daylight basement is one story from the street and three from the bottom of the yard, and that gap is the single biggest variable in a light quote up here.
Most of the Highlands went up between about 1960 and the mid-1980s with the same design brief on nearly every lot: living space on the downhill side, glaze the whole wall. What that leaves is a modest street-facing roofline and a downhill elevation that can run two or three stories with long horizontal bands of fixed glass beneath it. If you want the house to read lit from below — which is how the Highlands actually looks from the valley — the downhill run is the work. Quoting that from the curb would be guessing, so we walk the downhill side before putting a number on it.
Driveways up here are short and steep and the streets off Bogus Basin Road are narrow, so we park once, tight to the curb, and carry in. On the downhill elevations the footing is sloped and often decomposed granite over hardpan, which is not a surface to improvise a ladder on in November. We plan the reach in advance — pole sections loaded for the actual drop, ladders only where there is honest level ground. That planning is the difference between a clean install and a crew standing in your yard at dusk deciding what to do.
Every attachment point is a plastic clip — no staples, no nails, nothing driven into stone, stucco or fascia. On a home this size the bigger issue is the cut list: hips, dormers, gable returns and porch columns each need their own measured length of commercial-grade strand, and an installer working off stretched store strings ends up with uneven spacing on exactly the elevation you bought the house for. We measure each run, cut to it, and label the set so year two goes on faster than year one. Wind exposure out here is the other reason stretched strands fail — a properly seated clip on a cut-to-length run is what survives a January blow.
Every quote covers the strands themselves — commercial-grade, cut to your roofline — install, mid-season fixes, January takedown and off-season storage. On a property this size the useful advice is about scope, not price: light the entry gable and the main street-facing lines first, because that is what reads from the road, and add trees, courtyard runs or the back elevation in a later season. Since we store your custom-cut set between seasons, adding on never means starting the measuring over. The honest limit is that we do not do animated or music-synced shows — rooflines, peaks, columns and trees done cleanly is the job we are set up to do well.
Larger elevations take longer to measure, cut and hang, so October is the right call rather than a nice idea — routes fill by mid-November and the bigger jobs need the daylight. Installs run through December for late deciders. Takedown is in January and included, along with off-season storage: on a property this size that is the part owners underestimate most, and it is already in the quote. Anything that goes dark between now and then is a call to (208) 453-6760 and a no-charge fix.
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Usually yes, and it is normally the elevation worth lighting since it is what the valley sees. We work it with pole sections loaded for a three-story reach off the lower patio or deck. We confirm the approach at the quote in daylight rather than working it out on a slope on install day.
It is tight, not impossible. We park once and carry in rather than shuffling vehicles on a narrow street. If your block has a spot that works better or a restriction we should know about, mention it at booking.
We supply them. Every install uses commercial-grade C9 or mini LED strands custom-cut to your roofline. We do not hang store-bought strands — a roof in December is the wrong place to find out a four-year-old set has a dead section, and supplying the lights ourselves is what lets us include mid-season fixes in the quote.
No. Every attachment point is a plastic clip matched to what you actually have — gutter lip, shingle edge or ridge. Nothing is stapled, nailed, screwed or glued. When the lights come down in January there is no evidence they were ever up, which is the whole standard.
Call or text (208) 453-6760 and we come fix it at no charge. That is part of the job, not a separate service call. Commercial-grade strands fail far less than store strings, but wind, squirrels and one crushed bulb still happen — you should not spend a Saturday diagnosing it on a ladder.
We come back, take everything down, and store your set through the off-season, where it gets inspected and repaired before next year. No bins in the garage, no untangling next November, and no second invoice — takedown and storage are already in the quote.
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