Removing old paint? Choose the right scaffold.

For laying two storeys of joinery bare you take the Altrex RS TOWER 51, a tower measuring 75 centimetres across the base. That figure earns its keep twice over. It slips through a garden gate or along a side path where nothing broader would follow, and it puts you near enough to the face to scrape hard without stretching. As a model the RS51 is built from 4.2 up to 14.2 metres of working height, so what this job asks of it sits in the bottom third of that range.

On a deck of 245 centimetres you set down more kit here than a painter ever does. A hot air gun with an extension lead, a sander with a hose running to the vacuum below, scrapers in three widths, filling knives and a tub for the lumps to land in. All of that fits on a narrow deck as long as it stays along the wall side and your walking strip stays open. Length helps you more than width, since you take a run of timber bare across, not in depth.

Where two of you scrape side by side, or a large extractor and a sack of paint waste have to go up the tower, the RS52 at 135 centimetres becomes worth a look. You pay for that extra deck in tubes to carry and in a chassis that no longer fits down every gap. For a garden with an eighty centimetre gate the decision makes itself. What stands ready in each size is set out under every mobile scaffold available to hire.

The top of this job almost always sits at the edge of the timber just under the roof: an upper window, the fascia board or the bargeboard. That is where the weather has had its way longest and where the thickest crust of perished paint waits for you. Measure to that edge and not up to the tiles. If the tape lands between 6 and 8 metres, your platform hangs somewhere between four and six; add roughly two metres of reach above the platform and you have the working height you book.

Rest the end of the tape on the slabs the wheels will sit on, never on the threshold of your front door. Where the path down the side lies lower than the terrace at the back, the whole build drops with it and that elevation wants an extra section. Factor in as well that this work drives force downward as often as upward, and that the head of a frame has to come within reach without you rising onto your toes for the last inch.

Building too low punishes you longer here than it would on paintwork. Leave a ribbon of old paint up there because you could not quite get at it and the fresh coat finds nothing to grip, so the first flake reappears along that exact line. Standing low also puts you under the gun rather than beside it, with hot scrapings dropping your way. Which build suits a reach of eight metres is listed per model.

The strip of ground beneath your tower turns into a waste zone on this job. Everything that leaves the face lands there: flakes, sanding dust, crumbs of filler and, if you go the chemical route, paste sliding down the wall. Roll sheeting or heavy polythene over it, but keep the wheels and all four stabilisers on the hard surface underneath. A stabiliser foot resting on slippery film has stopped doing its job, and you find that out only once you are up there levering at something.

Then walk the pitch itself. Block paving, a drive or a well trodden shell path holds wheels where they belong; loose soil in a border or turf that softens after a shower will not. Expect the usual company along a house wall: the water butt under the downpipe, an outside tap, the bike rack, tubs of plants that needed covering anyway. Shift that lot before the van pulls up, because once the tower is standing nothing comes out from under it.

Finally, work out which way the dust will drift. Sanding grit and paint flakes travel well past the edge of your sheeting, so warn the neighbours before you light the gun and make sure no car is parked alongside. Where the footprint runs over the pavement, leave a walking route clear and ask your council what it expects. One phone call settles it. For a path that falls away, the piece on uneven ground gives the method.

Laying timber bare is the slowest stage of any repaint. Burning off advances per running metre of frame and not per panel of wall: warm it, scrape it, go back over the places that would not let go. A machine sander does cover ground, yet mouldings, rebates and corners still ask for a cork block and a hand afterwards. On the joinery of an ordinary two-storey terrace that adds up to three to five days, with no primer laid and no brush washed out.

Inside such a period sit waits you cannot squeeze. Stripper paste has to bite down through the coats before a knife goes anywhere near it, and any face you wetted must be dry again before abrasive touches it. Weather bears down harder on this than on painting: soaked timber will not sand and a gun behaves unpredictably in gusts. So book through to the day the substrate is genuinely ready for paint, rather than to the day you hope to be done.

Booking generously costs you very little, because the rental price loads onto the front of the period. Only that opening twenty-four hours carries the full amount; each hire day behind it drops by ninety-five per cent, which means two days of slack barely register in your budget. Standing at a half stripped frame watching the van arrive for the tower works out far worse. A longer job is easier to estimate alongside this explanation of hire periods.

Each set-up gives you 245 centimetres of deck, which on this work amounts to roughly one window bay with a piece of wall beside it. Finish that bay outright before you move: heat or paste first, then the scraper, then abrasive, then sweep it dust free. Save the last of those steps for later and you will be putting the very same position up a second time. You reposition less often than a painter does, simply because each bay holds you in one place far longer.

What has to travel up the ladder mounts up quickly. A gun or blowtorch, an extension lead, scrapers in three widths, sheet abrasive or a machine, gloves, a dust mask and something to catch the debris. Drape the lead in a generous loop over the guardrail so no tension pulls on it and no wheel runs across it. Clear the deck to bare boards before you roll the tower, because a scraper dropped from five metres buries itself in the lawn.

The thing people misjudge is the sheer volume of waste. A wall of perished coats yields buckets of flakes, and those do not belong in the household bin. Have a lidded container ready below and never leave full sacks waiting up top until you happen to climb down. Take on repairing rotten timber in the same pass and each bay gains a round of filling and curing, which stretches your hire by a good two days.

Your tower turns up as a stack of loose parts, counted and complete, and never as a finished structure. Settle in advance which patch of ground that stack goes on, and keep clear the ground that will vanish under sheeting within a day. A drive, a run of pavement or the grass out front beats the path beside the wall, since that is where you will be walking with a tub and a scraper. A reservation logged before 15:00 on a working day puts the bundle at your door the next working day.

Which day the parts arrive and which day they leave is entirely your call. When you are removing old paint, have them brought the day before you start, so there is time to build and to unroll the sheeting straight away. Putting the tower together falls to you: the manual sits on top of the bundle and the assembly film plays on your phone. Live nearby with a van and you may take the stack away at no charge, by appointment, from Zeeburgerpad 89 in Amsterdam.

Once the final flake is off, you break the tower down and we drive round to pick the parts up. Hold off on that dismantling until the sheeting and all it holds has been rolled away, or you will shake a load of grit over the tubes. Check the forecast against your delivery date, because a dry run of days counts for more here than it does on paintwork. What the round trip costs in your province is set out at the fixed delivery rates.

The deck under your boots is proved to 200 kilos per square metre, which EN 1004 files as load class 3. Removing old paint brings you nearer that figure than you would guess: two workers, a machine, an extension lead and a tub of wet paint residue together outweigh the tin and brush a decorator carries. Spread all of it across the full surface rather than gathering man and material into one corner beside a guardrail. That is the point at which boards begin to feel springy underfoot.

A handful of standing agreements run alongside. Brakes go on before a foot touches the ladder, nothing and nobody stays on the deck while the tower is rolled, and strong wind puts a stop to the day. Wind is doubly unhelpful on this job, since it carries the dust across the whole garden and you would rather not have gusts playing round a lit nozzle. Reset all four stabilisers after each move and wind them firmly down again.

The hazards that genuinely belong to old paint are heat and dust. Never set a still glowing gun down on the boards, and after burning off go back along every joint and the reverse of a fascia board looking for something smouldering. Sanding grit turns a deck slippery, so brush it at the end of each round. Keep the zone below you empty, since onlookers gather exactly there, and read through the rules for working at height once more if it has been a while.