How long did this take to set up this year?
I do most of the work myself. I'm hard to work with, so my wife usually stays away. She did help for a few hours with the huge tree, since I needed someone on the ground in case I fell off the roof. No, seriously I needed her on the ground to help pull the lights around the branches on the far side of the tree, it was hard for her to put up with me for that time.
My daughter has really chipped in on the "design" end, and helped with painting the blue tree white for example. My son also helps sometimes running around getting new light strings for me. But pretty much it's just me.
This year took a long time partly because I had to build 2 new pvc structures (for the new blue tree, and the frame for the flag on the roof). I also added eye-hooks to the sloped edge of my roof to hang the icicle lights, last year I clipped gutter clips to the edge of the shingles but this will make things go much quicker next year. I also added hooks around the 2nd floor windows.
I started November 6th, because the weather was nice and I needed a break from the political campaign here in Virginia.
I don't keep track, but if I had to guess I'd say I spent about 100 hours altogether. I just finished up last sunday, which is very late -- but we had a lot of bad weather, a lot of cold weather, and I had a lot of things scheduled on the weekends which made it hard.
With the hooks, I can do the entire "house-attached" lights in a single 4-hour period. It helps to store the lights well, I pack each individual string, mostly back the way they come (which I can't describe, maybe I should take a picture). This is a little more work putting them away, but it means they don't take up a lot of space, and when I get a set of 100 out, I can simply hold one end, and "throw" the string, and it "accordians" out. And for the bushes, I just "barely" accordian out the lights, and it gives more "volume" to the bush and sticks better.
I also replace all burned-out lights when packing up, and again when getting them out.
I bet my wife would tell me it was a lot more than 100 hours. I really enjoy the work, so the time flies.