PHILADELPHIA -- As the sun set behind his Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, home last Tuesday, Greg Bowden looked up in awe while three workers scurried across the roof, installing hundreds of lights.
The orange-vested climbers shimmied across the ridges, pulling themselves with their arms in front and their legs braced on either side. Hauling strands of lights, which had been custom-cut upon arrival, they slid slowly and cautiously down the roof’s sloped sides to the gutters. One dragged along a worn couch cushion, which they’d use for traction on the walk back up, to keep from slipping on the shingles.
Looking on from the front lawn, Bowden — who paid $5,000 for Four Seasons Property Services to install 600 lights on the house, front walkway, and shed — said his family of four simply loved Christmas. As he spoke, his wife, Jennifer, was putting up the family’s third artificial tree in a front room, and their 12- and 11-year-old children were peeking out the front door to see how the lights were coming.
Bowden said his family thought it was time they let professionals do the most arduous part of their annual decorating.
“We used to do it on our own,” said Bowden, 46, who owns a financial advising firm. But from start to finish, the process of putting up the lights was a pain: “I’m pulling them out of the garage. Half of them work. Half of them don’t work.”
And as for getting up on the roof and installing them in as many places as the Four Seasons crew was doing, “there’s no way,” Bowden said. “Forget about it.”
A growing number of Philadelphia-area residents are outsourcing their outdoor holiday decorating to professional companies for between $1,000 and $30,000. Early birds who are OK with their lights going up in...
