DuPage County Editor’s Choice: 913 E. Evergreen St., Wheaton
An interview with Robert Pechous.
Q: How long have you been decorating your house like this?
A: Four years. This is the fourth Christmas since I bought the house, so I have been doing it every year. It’s been getting bigger and bigger each year.
Q: What inspired you to go all out with your decorations?
A: I always like Christmas and Christmas tree lights. I work on computers, so you put it together and you got a big Christmas light display. It’s all choreographed exactly to music. I pick out the music and then I start mapping it all out and putting the lights to the music for every exact detail so it’s precise and all working right.
Q: How many hours does it take to put up the display?
A: I haven’t counted, but if I did, I would lose count because there’s always a lot of thinking and working out the little pieces and parts.
Q: How many strings of lights are involved?
A: There are about a little more than 35,000 lights. Most of them are 100-light strings, so there are more than 300 strings of lights.
Q: How much does your electric bill spike?
A: Surprisingly, the bill doesn’t spike that much because the lights are tuned to music, so they are not all on at the same time, and they are only on in flashes and bits and pieces at a time. So it is actually not that noticeable.
Q: What do your neighbors think of the display?
A: So far they all really like it. I haven’t had any complaints.