Rare News Desk
If you’ve been taking your time carefully displaying and planning a huge masterpiece on your front lawn for the holiday weekend, give up now. A man at 17321 Avon Lane in Tinley Park has been wearing the crown for 3 years, his display is something to be gawked at.
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Back in 2013, Dominic Kowalczyk was one of 20 homeowners from around the country chosen for ABC’s “The Great Christmas Light Fight“ show. Dominic told ABC Chicago it took him, his girlfriend and a group of friends about 300 hours to erect the display which comprises 100,000 lights and more than a mile of extension cords.
Now three years later, his tradition shines brighter than ever.
The house he won with was his parents’ house at the time; he’s since bought it and the homes on either side of him, which he’s renting to his brother and a friend. He confessed to the Tribune that having his own Christmas compound might have been the motivation when buying the homes next door.
“I own all three houses in a row, so it’s just going to get bigger and bigger,” he said.
His decorations take a little bit more work than simply putting some lights up. He makes about half of the decorations, including most of the wood structures.
“We like to make a lot of our stuff,” he said. “That’s why it’s different and unique.”
Kowalczyk, is a naturally creative person, he owns a construction company, Construction Concepts of Illinois. Some of his favorite decorations are “anything that moves,” he said, which is what children seem to like as well.
“We built a new house last year and we put a fog machine in it so it smokes out of the chimney all night,” he said. “When we did ‘The Great Christmas Light Fight,’ we converted our stuff over to go with the music, so that’s been something we’ve been building on the last couple of years.”
Every year, he puts out a sign-in book for people to sign and leave comments for feedback, but it’s mostly adoring fans.
“It’s really cool going through it at the end of the year, because it’s literally about 200 pages long of just signatures (saying) ‘We love it’ and ‘We come every year,’ People are in town to visit family and they end up coming to see our house.” he said.
He’s collected signatures from as far as Norway.
Dominic knows this can’t be done alone, he married his girlfriend who helped him win the big prize back in 2013, Alyssa.
“I went into the relationship knowing he’s got a crazy Christmas addiction,” she said, laughing. “It is one of the things I love about him.”
He starts the weekend before Thanksgiving and takes that entire week off work. He tries to have everything up and running by the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
“It’s so much work. It’s absolutely insane. Usually Black Friday and that Saturday, there will be about 20 to 25 people over here helping us decorate,” he said. “It’s just a massive undertaking to set that all up and to take it all down.”
So how does this all pan out with utilities? It’s not as bad as I imagined. Apparently, he saves a lot of money since converting about 80 percent of his lights to LED.
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“It’s about $600 a month. Before it was about $900 a month,” he said. “Compared to what we spend on new decorations and replacing what we have, the electric bill is a drop in the bucket.”
Here’s the information if you want to go by this weekend, but hot tip: Park and then walk there to avoid congested traffic.
When: 5:30-11 p.m. Dec. 1-Jan. 1
Where: 17321 Avon Lane, Tinley Park
Tickets: Free admission
