Christmas Designs

Christmas Beacons

Joshua Hoegh from First Baptist Church of Elgin in Elgin, IL brings us this warm Christmas look.

Their 2014 Christmas series was titled “Simply Christmas”, and after weeks of discussion and brainstorming, they decided to move forward with a design that implemented “simple” elements, but in a grand and striking way.

The original concept was to incorporate panels of wood pallets and intermix metal conduit and Edison bulbs. This design, though beautiful in their minds, proved a bit tricky to take on. One challenge they faced was acquiring the materials that their design called for.

When it comes to using wood pallets for interior designs (whether on a stage or in your living room) there are a couple of challenges: (1) they can be hard to track down in large quantities, which they definitely needed for this design and (2) health concerns. There has been a lot of concern raised online about the chemicals that pallets are treated with, whether or not you have bugs in them, or even the question of what has been transported on them.

To get around these issues, Joshua went to their local Home Depot and purchased flat-top fence posts. It allowed him to purchase in large quantities, it still gave them the “look” of the pallet boards, and the best part – all of their fence materials were significantly marked down in the fall, since it’s no longer “fence building” season. They were able to purchase all of their wood for less than $200.

In order to get the “recycled” wood pallet look, Joshua purchased 4 different stains to give them 4 shades of wood.

The other issue was the Edison bulbs. If you’ve ever done ANYTHING with Edison bulbs, you know they aren’t cheap. At your local home repair store, you can find them for about $10/each. But after some online shopping, Joshua stumbled across 1000bulbs.com, which allowed him to purchase all of his light bulbs (after a Columbus Day promo code) for less than $4/each. The bulbs were wired into dimmers, so Joshua could control each panel (and Christmas tree lighting) manually. This allowed for a greater amount of freedom in our lighting design.

As they had done with some of our previous stage designs, Joshua wanted to incorporate their lobby in the overall design. To do that, they came up with smaller scale installations that aesthetically tied into the stage.

To finish it off, they intermixed on the stage and in the lobby, some of their Christmas trees that they’ve collected over the years.

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SIMPLYCHRISTMAS27 Christmas 2014 Sanctuary - Plan view

Christmas 2014 Sanctuary - Sitting Front Left

Christmas 2014 Sanctuary - Sitting Front Right

Christmas 2014 Sanctuary - Sitting mid Sanctuary

Cracked Wood Manger in the Brush

12 responses to “Christmas Beacons”

  1. Dennis Fuentes says:

    Great design!! What did you use as the poles to hold the Edison bulbs? Also, what’s used to connect the bulb to the poles?

    • Joshua says:

      Thanks for the comment! :)

      For the poles we used 1/2″ metal conduit cut to the various lengths. Securing the bulbs to the tops of the poles was trickier – we used keyless sockets at the top of each pole, but our project manager had to purchase “adapters” of some sort to be able to secure the socket to the pole.

      We then simply ran the wiring down through the conduit and under the platforms!

      • Elvira Mousaian says:

        Hi Joshua,
        Do you guys make those light bulb wood pieces to sell, we are interested in about 28′ to 32′ of it.

  2. Barbara Rocher says:

    Very nicely done Josh! It looks great. There was obviously a lot of thought and time put into this. Job well done! I’m a proud Aunt!

  3. Rick Sweeney says:

    Very nice Josh! You must come from a very creative family. (On your mother’s side of course). Very proud of you!

  4. Janene Nagel says:

    Nice Job!!! It has a very warm and inviting look!! Congrats on the recognition!!!

  5. Vaughn VanSkiver says:

    Great job Josh. I also liked how you brought the theme out into your lobby.

    How did you secure the light poles on the underside of the platforms?

  6. Drew Hoopingarner says:

    I would love to know the software you used to create your rendering in the last 4 pictures on this design.

    • Joshua says:

      Great question, Drew – those renderings were created using SketchUp. James, an invaluable member of our team, draws those up for all of our designs – he also uses that program to determine & create our material lists, quantities, etc.

      Hope that helps!

  7. Emily Hoegh says:

    Beautiful work, Josh!!!! I LOVED doing Christmas programs for many years….it’s such a special time to share the good news and your designs I’m sure added ALOT to the presentation of the beautiful story!!!

  8. grandma Hoegh says:

    beautiful. love you

  9. Áron Varga says:

    Amazing work!
    How did you fasten the poles to the wooden base? How did you manage to ha them all be straight and strong enough that the wouldn’t fall if people accidentally touched them?

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