Staining a log cabin? Choose the right scaffold.

For a log cabin of ordinary height you hire the Altrex MiTower, a one person tower 75 cm wide. That width is what decides it here: a garden building rarely stands on the street, so the scaffold has to pass a side gate, a paved path or the strip between the hedge and the wall first. Once it is round the back you can shift it along the elevation on your own. The models sit side by side on the page about the MiTower you can hire.

What has to go up with you is limited when you are staining: a tin, a wide brush or block brush, a cloth and a piece of abrasive paper for a rough patch. You do not need a second deck width for that. It matters more that the tower stays light, because you move it around a garden over grass and paving where no barrow track runs. Wheeling a heavy build over soft lawn costs you more time in the end than the extra deck width wins back.

If two of you are working, or if repair work with filler, a sander and a small step on the platform comes first, the narrow tower soon feels cramped. Hire the RS51 at 75 cm with more build height in that case, or the wide RS52 if materials really have to stay up there. Both of those reach 14.2 metres as models, well beyond what a cabin needs. Which other sizes sit in the fleet you find in the overview of mobile scaffolds for hire.

The highest point of this job is almost never the wall but the tip of the gable and the barge boards fixed against it. On a log cabin with a pitched roof that point usually sits between 2.5 and 3.5 metres above the garden, and a working height of 4 to 6 metres then serves you well. Work back to your platform: from the deck you stand on, roughly 2 metres of reach is added before you are up at the ridge.

Your zero point is the ground the wheels come to rest on, and at a garden building that is rarely level with the floor inside. If the little house sits on a raised concrete kerb, or on slabs above a lawn that falls away towards a ditch, your measurement starts a good deal lower than you would guess by eye. Where the roof drops away at the back into a lower overhang, still take the highest barge board, because that is where your brush will be.

Hiring too tight shows in the finish straight away with stain. Stand too low and you work the ridge with a straight arm above your head, the stain runs down your brush and the top logs end up with a different saturation from the rest. On top of that you still have to fetch that last half metre with a second set up. What a working height of 6 metres gives you in practice is set out on that page.

The standing place for this job is nearly always garden and not paving, and that is the hardest part of the whole set up. Grass gives way the moment weight comes onto it, certainly after a wet night. So lay a firm board or a paving slab under each wheel, so the foot does not press into the turf while you are up there. Check once more after the first hour that everything is still level, because sinking into turf is slow and you notice it only when the tower already leans.

Then look at the space around it. The four stabilisers splay outwards and therefore want a strip that is wider on every side than the tower itself. At a log cabin there is usually a border right there, a water butt under the downpipe, a stack of firewood or a tree root you cannot flatten. Clear that away before the scaffold arrives. If your garden slopes or the soil is loose, first read what to arrange on uneven ground.

Watch what hangs above you as well. A garden building often stands at the back, with an espalier, a pergola or the branches next door over it, and those decide how high you can still build on this spot. Prune whatever is in the way well before your delivery day, or choose a position that approaches the gable from the side. Shifting along with a branch poking between the guard rails is no option, and sawing at height even less so.

A log cabin of average size takes two coats of stain, and the staining itself goes quicker than most people expect. What eats the time is the preparation: green growth off, loose fibre sanded away, resin patches treated and the whole thing left to dry before anything may go on. For a complete cabin including the gable end you therefore land on two to three rental days, with one more on top when the timber has had nothing for years and drinks unevenly everywhere.

Part of that period you stand still with nothing to be done about it. The first coat has to have sunk away completely before the next may follow, and the product sets that pace together with the outside temperature. The season comes on top: in spring and late summer dew lies on the timber long into the morning, so you only get going around the middle of the morning. Plan your rental days over one unbroken dry spell for that reason.

Booking generously is rarely an expensive choice on this job. The full rate applies to the first 24 hours only, and everything after that comes with 95% off, so a spare day for a shower barely shows in your total. Do not put your end date on the morning your last coat is due to fall, but a day beyond it, and keep an eye on the outlook while you work. Help with that estimate is at working out your number of rental days.

With a deck 245 cm long you take a good two metres of wall per position. At a log cabin that means in practice that the whole gable triangle falls within one set up, from the ridge down to where you can carry on from the ground. Finish that triangle in one go, because a start line in stain stays visible once the timber has dried. Begin at the ridge and work downwards, so that you never walk over a band you have just laid.

Stain log by log and over the full length, corner to corner, and do not break off halfway along a length. With horizontal shiplap that means you work across the width and only move once the edge of the log is reached. Take everything you need up in one trip: the tin, a second brush for the joints, a cloth for the drips and tape for the ironmongery. Every forgotten brush is one more climb down.

What people misjudge is the overhang. You stain the underside of it above your head, with the brush turned over and a drip free load, and per metre that costs about three times as long as a smooth wall. Allow one or two extra positions for it deliberately, certainly where the roof edge projects well over the wall and you work at an angle. Doing the surrounding fence around the garden as well is better kept outside this rental period.

The mobile scaffold turns up at your address as a counted set of loose parts, not as a tower that already stands. Agree with yourself beforehand where that pile lands, because you want the strip beside the log cabin free for the work. The drive or the terrace is a better spot than the lawn, where tubes sink in and turn wet. Fix your booking on a working day and manage it before 15:00, and the van is on its way to you the next working day.

Which date the set arrives and which date it leaves again you fill in yourself, and with stain work you let both choices follow the forecast. Make sure the parts are lying there a day before your first staining day, so that building and working do not fall on one morning. That building is your side of the job: a manual comes with it and a video is ready, delivering an assembled tower is not something we do. Count on carrying the parts to the back of the garden by hand afterwards.

Once the job is done we drive back to collect everything. Taking it down stays your task, as does stacking the parts somewhere a van can reach, so not behind a gate whose key is indoors. Count the pieces while you dismantle, then nothing stays behind in the long grass. A dry, level spot for that stack makes the load out quicker for everyone. What bringing and fetching costs you read at the delivery rates per province.

What we hire out is tested against EN 1004 and sits in load class 3, which means 200 kg per square metre of deck. Staining on your own you stay well under that, because you plus a full tin weigh little. Climb up with two of you and set a box of repair materials down as well and it is worth adding up. What that class stands for you can read in the explanation of this scaffold standard.

The fixed rules apply at the back of a garden where nobody is watching too. Before you take the first rung the brakes go on; moving happens empty, so without a person and without a tin of stain on board; and as soon as the wind really picks up you stop. A garden building often stands free in the grass, with no house to break the gusts, so you feel the wind here sooner than against a house wall. Every move ends with checking the four stabilisers again.

The risk that belongs to this job in particular is the deck under your feet. Spilt stain does not soak into aluminium and turns a platform greasy within a minute, so put card under your tin and wipe drips away at once. Keep the zone below clear of children and pets, because a falling tin takes the whole garden with it and splashes far into the border. The rest is at the rules for working at height.