Painting a garage? Choose the right scaffold.

The MiTower of 75 cm is the logical model here, and that comes from the sides. Between a detached garage and the fence or the boundary there is often sixty to eighty centimetres, and a wider pitch simply will not go in there. Because the parts are light you also shift it on your own along a wall of six metres. Measure that strip before you book; it usually turns out narrower than you thought. Which build heights are available stands at hiring a MiTower.

For the door surface the platform length of 245 cm works out well. A standard up and over door is about 2.4 metres wide, so you stand in front of it in one go and finish the door, the lintel and the fascia board above without shifting in between. That saves more than time: on a big smooth surface every interruption shows up as a streak, and you avoid that by working from edge to edge. On the side walls you use that same length to finish a good piece of wall per pitch.

Has the garage a gable end or a pitched roof carrying on higher, then check whether this build gets you high enough; otherwise the narrow RS51 with its larger reach is the better choice. Working in pairs with a lot of material going up, the wide RS52 is an option, though it almost never fits the strip along the fence and you lose more there than you gain. Doing only the door surface? Then look at painting a garage door.

The highest point on this job lies above the door. The roof edge of a garage usually sits between two and a half and three metres, but above it the paintwork often carries on over a fascia board, a piece of cladding or a small gable. Your measuring point is the topmost edge that still gets a coat, and do not knock anything off it because you think you will just about reach. Sit around three metres and 4 to 6 metres of working height comes out ample.

The booking works like this: on the height of the platform you stand on comes roughly 2 metres of reach, because that is as far as you get with stretched arms. For a garage your platform therefore lands around one and a half to two and a half metres. Note that this says nothing about what the model can do: the MiTower runs on to 6.2 metres, only you do not build it out here. Book your reach on the highest point. That build appears on the page with 6 metres of working height.

Measure from the drive and not from the garage floor. A drive nearly always falls away towards the street, and the difference between the threshold of the door and a point three metres further on can be twenty centimetres. Stand on the low piece and you need those centimetres in build height. Choose too tight and you finish the fascia board with stretched arms, which shows in the covering, precisely on the surface that is best seen from the street.

The drive is your working floor and it is seldom level. Setts subside at the gutter, there is a fall towards the street and at the door there is often a threshold or a drainage channel. Put the pitch on the flattest piece you can find, slide a stout board under a wheel if you must, and check with a spirit level that the bottom frame really stands square before you build on. Repeat that check after every move across the slope.

Keep the swing of the door clear as well. An up and over door turns outwards as it opens and describes an arc of nearly a metre over the drive; a sectional door does not, but it has tracks and a motor that ask for room on the inside. Chalk that arc out before you set the scaffold down, because a stabiliser just inside it means you cannot get into the garage for those days and so cannot reach your tools.

At the sides it gets tighter. There a narrow path usually runs along the fence, with a gutter, a water butt or a border beside it and sometimes a slab of height difference. Measure that strip at its narrowest place, because that settles whether the pitch will go there. And make sure the car is off the drive for the whole hire period: manoeuvring past an assembled scaffold every morning is asking for damage, to the paintwork as much as to your pitch.

Count your square metres first. Two side walls of six by two and a half metres, a gable end and the door surface quickly come to forty or fifty square metres, and that is without the fascia boards, the roof edge and the frame of the side window. At an attached garage one wall drops out, but the junction with the house comes in and that takes its own time. Reckon on a full day per coat for a detached garage, and half a day more if the brickwork must be cleaned first.

Cleaning, sanding, local repair and two coats together bring you to four or five hire days. The door surface asks for its own attention: metal or timber of that size you want to do in one pass and not in full sun, so you plan that surface for a cloudy morning. The drying time between two coats is fixed in your planning too, and at low temperatures it runs longer than the tin says. What other jobs cost in days is in the overview with hire days.

Booking amply is cheap. In the rental price the first twenty four hours carry the whole rate, and 95 per cent comes off each day after that, so two days extra behind your planning costs you next to nothing. At a garage that is exactly what you want, because the door may not open until the door surface is genuinely hard. Put the collection day a day beyond the moment you want to drive the car back in.

Begin at the top and work down per pitch: first the roof edge and the fascia board, then the wall surface, then the door or the wall beneath it. That way whatever you spill always lands on something still to come. On the door surface you work from top to bottom in bands that overlap generously, and you do that whole door in one continuous session without a break, or you get a visible change halfway across the surface that you will never polish out.

Along the side walls you move every two and a half metres, so a wall of six metres costs you three pitches per coat. Take everything you need up in one go, because climbing down a sloping drive with a full tray is precisely where it goes wrong. Hang that tray on the guard rail and do not set it on the deck; on a narrow platform there is no room to step round it without catching something.

Leave the door shut while you are working on it and keep it shut until the last coat is hard. An up and over door you turn open too early rubs along the rebate and takes the fresh coat with it. What people misjudge is the underside of the roof edge and the piece between door frame and wall: it looks like nothing, but they are narrow edges you have to follow with a small brush and they eat half an hour per pitch. Count that in, because it happens again at every setting.

A drive is a pleasant place to unload: the van can usually get right up to the garage and the counted set then stands where you need it. Do point out a corner where the parts may lie, because the rest of the drive you need free for your pitches and for the arc of the door. Do not lay the frames against the wall that has to be sanded first, and keep them out of the channel along the garage where the rainwater runs.

Which date the parts drive up and which date they disappear again you give yourself at the booking. Order on a working day and do it before 15:00 and the parts lie on the drive the next working day. Look at the forecast before you pin that date, because you would rather not paint a garage door in full sun or with rain on the way, and you also need a day to find the car somewhere else to stand.

The building you do yourself; nobody from us comes to stand the scaffold up. A manual comes with it and a film shows the order, and at this height the pitch is there in a short half hour. Once the last coat is on you dismantle the scaffold and stack all the sections together; we drive past to take them. Not keen on waiting? At Zeeburgerpad in Amsterdam you fetch the set yourself, free and by appointment. What the driving costs stands at the rates per province.

The platform of a scaffold out of our hire fleet is made to EN 1004; load class 3 means two hundred kilos per square metre may go on it. On this job you will not reach that, but remember the model is meant for one user: let nobody climb up to get the door surface finished faster. Two people on a one person tower also changes the balance on a drive that already falls away. What that standard lays down is in the note about it.

On a sloping drive the fixed rules matter all the more. Put all four castors on the brake before you step up, because a scaffold standing on a fall wants to creep towards the street of its own accord. Never move it while somebody is on it or tools are lying on it, and get off once the wind gets up; round a detached garage there is no shelter at all on the sides. After every move go along the stabilisers and set them tight against the paving again.

Two things belong specifically to a garage. The first is the door itself: the springs of an up and over door are under tension and the tracks are no support, so use them for nothing and lean nothing against them. The second is what stands beneath you. Park the car well away and keep the drive empty, because a tin of paint falling three metres onto a bonnet is an expensive memory. Lock the garage when you break off. The rest you read at the rules for work at height.