Painting doors? Choose the right scaffold.

A door sits in an opening that stays in use, and that steers your choice more than the height does. What you hire here is a MiTower: a light one person tower measuring 75 cm across. That width slips in beside a frame, onto a narrow pavement and between the wall and a car on the drive, where a broad pitch would block the whole opening. Which builds are possible and what the set contains you will find on the page where you can hire a MiTower.

On the 245 cm platform you have a door frame in front of you across its full width, reveals and lintel included. That means you never have to shift halfway along a head rail, and it is exactly that join you would still be looking at in high gloss a year later. Extra platform width buys you nothing on this job, because the surfaces are slim and you carry little: a tin, a brush and a small roller. What does count is lifting the frames single handed.

For internal doors on a landing the choice falls differently. There the RS44 room scaffold fits, which passes an interior door from about 70 cm and reaches some four metres; you will find it among the room scaffolds for indoor work. If the doors go along with a full facade round, you are better off renting a narrow mobile scaffold with more reach straight away. Stay with the doors and their fanlights and the light tower is the thriftiest choice.

The highest thing you have to reach at a door is rarely the leaf itself. That stops around 2.10 metres, but above it sit the fanlight, the head rail and often a band of render or a canopy that has to go in the same colour. Measure to the top of that last surface. If it brings you out at 3 to 4 metres, a reach of 4 to 6 metres is the right order and leaves margin for a porch that turns out taller than you thought.

The working height you book is your platform height plus roughly 2 metres of reach, since that is how far you get standing with your arms out. At a door that means a platform a little over two metres, which is a low setting. Do not confuse that setting with the model: the MiTower runs on to 6.2 metres, you simply do not build it out for this job. What that saves in frames shows up in the builds for 6 metres of working height.

Measure from the surface the castors will rest on, so not from the threshold. If there is a step or two up to the door, the tower stands on the path below and you need those steps as well. Choose too tight and you finish the fanlight with your arms above your head, the gloss runs in streaks and the first low sun shows precisely where you stood. Booking one setting higher costs you no extra build time and spares you that.

The spot here is cramped and busy at the same time. You put the tower next to the frame and not in front of it, so the leaf keeps its swing and residents can get past. If the door opens outwards, chalk the arc of the leaf onto the slabs first and keep it clear; a stabiliser just inside that arc earns you a scratch in fresh gloss. The four stabilisers splay outwards, so allow half a metre extra on each side.

Then look at the paving itself. A pavement falls towards the gutter, old setts are seldom flat, and the gully for the downpipe is usually exactly where you want a castor. Slide a stout board under any wheel that rocks, check with a spirit level that the bottom frames sit square, and repeat that check after every move. For as long as you are renting, that stays the most important daily check. How to take up a sloping surface neatly is set out in the piece on uneven ground.

If the door faces the street you are working in public space. Keep a walking route of at least a metre free, move bikes and bins aside the day before, and warn the postman with a note on the window. In a shared porch, ask the neighbours whether they can use another entrance for those days, and tell the council if the tower ends up on the public pavement. That is better arranged in advance than with a half wet head rail over your head.

A door is a small area with a lot of operations. Cleaning, sanding old gloss, going round the sealant lines, filling where the timber is dented, priming and then two thin coats: that is six passes over the same surface, with waiting time between each one. The fanlight and the reveals come on top, and the threshold usually gets an extra coat because it takes the most treading. In working hours a door is quickly done, in days it is not, and that is why you plan in stages.

Doing a front door, a back door and a garden door, count on three to four hire days and on at least as many pitches. You lay the coats so that every door can shut again by late afternoon without tacking, so you start early and you stop in good time. Cold or damp weather stretches that, because exterior gloss wants to flow out above ten degrees or so. How others judge such a run of days is set out in the piece on hire days.

The way the rate is built rewards booking generously. The full amount applies only to the first twenty four hours, and every hire day after that comes with 95 per cent off. A day in hand behind your planning therefore costs almost nothing, while too short a period forces you to rush the last coat, and haste always shows in gloss work. So set your collection date a day later than the day you expect to finish.

Work from the top down and in the order that gets least in your way. First the lintel and the fanlight with its glazing beads, then the frame with the reveals, then the leaf and last the threshold. That way nothing more can drop onto a surface that is already finished. Everything above shoulder height you do standing on the platform with both hands free, and the leaf itself you simply take on from ground level.

Per stage you take up what that round needs and nothing else: a tin, a brush, some abrasive paper, a cloth and tape in your pocket. Anyone who is missing something halfway has to climb down, and the tower is standing in the very opening you want to pass through. Keep the door shut while you are up there, because a leaf swinging open against an upright rubs its own fresh gloss off. If the rebate is still wet, wedge it ajar on a block.

You only move when a door is genuinely finished. Roll the tower over the slabs with the brakes off to the next frame, lift it over a threshold rather than riding across one, and lock the castors again straight away. If you have to go through a gate to the back, take a couple of frames off; that costs a quarter of an hour. Do not underestimate the number of small surfaces: a six panel door has more edges than a window of the same size.

The set arrives as loose, counted parts. Agree indoors where that stack is going to end up, because the square metres in front of the door are precisely the ones everybody has to walk over. A strip of front garden, the grass beside the path or the hall inside all work better than the pavement right at the frame. Do not lean the tubes against the wall you still have to sand either, and not on the slabs where the stabilisers will stand.

You pick the delivery day and the collection day yourself. Beat 15:00 on a working day with your order and the parts leave the following working day, and for gloss work outside you check the forecast first: you want a dry run of days with no night frost in it. Have the parts come at the end of the afternoon before, then you build at your ease and start the next morning with sanding instead of carrying.

Putting it up is your own job; we do not come and build. The manual is in the set and the assembly video is online; at this low setting you are half an hour on your own. At the end we fetch the tower back, so after the last coat you take it down and stack the parts on the spot you gave us. Picking the set up yourself at Zeeburgerpad in Amsterdam is fine as well, free and by appointment, and otherwise the delivery charges per province show what driving costs.

The platform carries 200 kg per square metre, the figure that belongs to load class 3 within EN 1004. On gloss work at a door you come nowhere near it, but watch something else: this tower is built for one person. So do not stand on it in pairs to do a fanlight together, not even briefly. Nor is a crate on the deck a way to gain the last few centimetres above the head rail. What sits behind that class is explained in the piece on loading and weight.

The fixed rules do not change because you are standing low. Brakes locked before you step up, nobody and nothing on the platform while the tower is rolling, and off it as soon as it really starts to blow, even though your head only just clears the fanlight. After every move go round all four stabilisers and fold them out again. A low pitch feels innocent, and that is exactly why people skip that check. Say it out loud and you will not skip it.

On this job the danger sits behind the door. Someone pushing against the leaf from inside while you are up top gives the tower a shove you never see coming. Turn the key, hang a sign on the handle and tell the rest of the house which way out is closed that day. Keep the space beneath you clear as well, because a tin that falls lands squarely on the mat. The rest you can read at working safely at height.