The title of this original post is presented by a faded blogger. Lol? Apologies. I took a break from blogging, but I have what I believe is an excellent tutorial for you! Who doesn’t enjoy some outdoor lighting, right?
After procrastinating for years, we finally installed outdoor lighting on our deck, and it is simply magnificent. Not to mention, it’s quite straightforward and relatively affordable to accomplish! That’s precisely why I’m here. To share my outdoor lighting expertise with you.
Required Supplies:
- A deck. This could be a patio. Or a porch? A floor with one wall?
- String lights. I suggest something rugged for better durability.
- Fence posts (ours measure 12 feet, trimmed down to 9 feet) I couldn’t locate the exact item online, but I linked a shorter version of the one we bought.
- Small carabiners for every point of attachment to the house
- Eye hooks to drill into the wall
- S hooks for each pole
- Cordless Drill
- Hacksaw (if shortening your fence posts)
- Zip ties (matching style) for your poles
Alright, let’s start with the basics. You’ll need to determine how you want to arrange your lights. Zigzag, square around your area? It’s your choice! I’m presenting to you some not-so-great photos of the actual supplies I utilized.
Clearly, there are various ways to hang the lights on the pole, but we chose to drill a small hole and insert the S Hook into it. It appears to be holding (keep in mind there is considerable tension once they’re installed), so I think it’s effective!
Once we drilled the holes in the poles and installed the S Hooks, we attached them to our deck railing. Since we have metal railings, we couldn’t drill anything into them. So, using a bit of creativity, we decided to zip tie them to the railings. We used 18-inch industrial ties.
After trimming off the excess, they’re hardly noticeable on the railing. Totally worth it even if they are visible! 🙂
Thennnnn use the eye hooks to drill into your house (sounds more intimidating than it is!).
Attach the carabiner to the eye hook and then insert the light cord into the carabiner.
I recommend placing the hook fairly high, around 9 1/2 feet. You want to leave some space for the string lights to “swoop,” and ensure no one bumps their heads.
Honestly, the most challenging aspect of this entire project is figuring out the light configuration. I only had to adjust one hook after drilling it into the wall, and it didn’t bother me too much. People really shouldn’t be scrutinizing your walls anyway!
Here you can observe the transformation from late afternoon to evening, and then to night.
Va-Va-VOOM!
I haven’t composed a tutorial in approximately 712 days, so I apologize if I overlooked something! Feel free to check out the video version of this on Instagram. I’ve saved it in my stories. Good luck!
