Painting pillars? Choose the right scaffold.

For columns you pick the Altrex RS51 at 75 centimetres wide, and here the choice turns on manoeuvrability rather than working room. This chassis gets set down four times per column, and anything broader or heavier converts that into an afternoon of hauling. Pillars seldom stand in the open either: between the shaft and the wall or the parapet there is often no more than a metre to play with. The model itself runs from a working height of 4.2 metres up to 14.2, so entrance columns keep you well down that scale.

The 245 centimetre deck is only half used on this sort of work. You stand facing a shaft half a metre wide at most, with a tin, a brush and a small roller by your boots. That length is not wasted, though: where columns in a gallery stand close together, one position lets you take two half pillars and saves a whole round of shifting. Measure the centre to centre spacing between the columns before anything gets booked, because that single figure decides whether the row costs you one circuit or two.

A broader chassis rarely pays off here, because the extra deck stands empty on one side while you still have to steer the thing around every column. Where the pillars are indoors, in a hall or beneath a void, you end up at the lower room scaffold instead, which rolls over a timber floor without scoring it and passes through an ordinary internal door. Height alone should not settle it. Compare what is on offer in the range of mobile scaffolds for hire before committing to a build.

The point you have to reach is not the top of the shaft but the joint where the column disappears into the beam, the canopy edge or the ceiling. There is frequently a widening or a bracket at that joint, projecting slightly further than the pillar itself and needing the same colour. Measure up to it and add half a metre for comfortable access. On entrance columns of six metres or thereabouts, your reach lands between 6 and 8 metres.

What gets booked is the working height, which is nothing more than deck height plus about two metres of reach. The platform on this job therefore comes to rest somewhere between four and six metres. Start the tape on the paving the wheels will stand on rather than on the landing alongside, because an entrance almost always sits a few treads above street level. Where a ramp runs past the row, the starting point differs from one stand position to the next.

Choose too low and precisely the top band goes untreated, which is where water runs down the column and the coat lets go first. Touching that in from a step ladder under a canopy is not on, so you get to hire a second time for a strip thirty centimetres deep. One setting higher costs very little at the booking and removes the risk outright. Which build belongs to which reach is set out clearly at the settings up to eight metres.

Around every column you need four places where the chassis will actually fit, and at a porch that is generally the sticking point. The stabilisers project outward at an angle and run straight into the steps, the planter, the landing or the neighbouring column. Do not draw them in to make it work; slide the set-up half a metre and take the face from an angle instead. Walk all four stand positions round the first pillar before you start, and the rest of the row becomes predictable.

The surface at an entrance deserves attention. Bluestone and polished slabs turn slippery after rain, an inspection cover rarely sits quite flush, and a drive often has a threshold or a drainage channel across it. Place the wheels so that not one of them rests on an edge, and after every quarter turn confirm that all four feet are carrying evenly again. A sunken paver announces itself only when you are already up there stretching for the top of the shaft.

Bear in mind as well that columns nearly always stand on a route people use. At a gallery, a porch or a company entrance there are people going past all day who are not expecting your scaffold. Arrange the set-up so a walking route stays open, hang tape or a sign, and agree with the building manager when the quiet hours fall. Where the set-up ends up on the pavement, ask what your council makes of that, since a porch on a public footway often falls under its own local rules.

The arithmetic here is straightforward: number of columns, times four stand positions, times two coats. Six pillars under a canopy therefore come to forty-eight set-ups, and each one costs a few minutes of brakes, stabilisers, rolling and locking down again. Together that mounts up faster than the brushwork does. For a row of four to six columns you hire for three to five days, sanding and degreasing before the first coat included in that figure. Working alone rather than in a pair pushes you towards the upper end.

Between two coats sits waiting time that will not compress, and outdoors the weather comes on top of it. Where the pillars stand under a canopy or in a porch you suffer less than at an open wall, though damp drawing up a column still causes delay. Indoors the weather plays no part, but the question of when the passage may be blocked by your set-up certainly does; in a shopping gallery that is seldom the moment that suits you.

Booking generously works out well against a sum like this, because the rate leans heavily on the opening period. One day is charged in full, the first one; every day beyond it is reduced by ninety-five per cent against what it would otherwise have been, so a spare day for a forgotten quarter turn barely registers. Come up a day short and the van arrives while half a column still stands in primer. Work your period out with the explanation of hire periods beside you.

Per stand position you take one quarter of the circumference, and that quarter you do in a single pass over the full height. On a round column you work in narrow vertical bands that have to meet along a wet edge; let such an edge dry before the following quarter begins and the join shows later as a stripe in low light. Put those transitions on the side of the column nobody sees from the path, and the finish reads as one continuous surface.

The top two metres come off the platform and the rest from the ground, which sounds like a compromise and is not. It works out genuinely handy: the tower serves only the stretch where you would otherwise be leaning a ladder against a round shaft, while the foot of each pillar gets walked round at the end. Carry up everything a whole quarter needs, because descending for a second brush costs you four times over on every single column.

What people underestimate is the shifting itself. Brakes off, stabilisers in, roll, line up, stabilisers out, brakes on: taken one by one these are nothing, yet at twenty-four stand positions per coat half a day vanishes into them. That is exactly why a row of columns wants an extra hire day sooner than a plain wall would. Combine anything due in the same place anyway, such as cleaning the canopy above the columns, so each of those positions earns its keep twice over.

The parts arrive complete and counted, and you decide where the driver puts them down. At an entrance that is harder than it sounds, because the space in front of the door is exactly the space everybody has to pass through. Nominate a corner of the car park or a strip beside the landing instead, and remember that the longest tubes will not come round a sharp bend. Reserve on a working day and get in before 15:00, and the set is with you one working day later.

Both the delivery day and the day everything leaves again are yours to schedule, and with a row of columns you would rather assemble outside the busy hour at the entrance. Nothing is driven out ready made: putting it together is your part, with the manual to hand and the instruction film there for whenever the order of parts is unclear. Allow half a day for that and put the sanding of the first column on a different morning.

Once the last column stands in its finishing coat you break everything down and we come for the parts. Stack them where a trolley can reach and count them as you pile them, so nothing has to be hunted for afterwards. Live nearby with room in your van and you may take the parts away at no charge, by appointment, at Zeeburgerpad 89 in Amsterdam. What the delivery costs per province is listed under the rates for the run.

The platform will carry 200 kilos on each square metre, the figure EN 1004 calls load class 3. At a column you never come close to that limit, because you work with no more than a tin, a brush and a small roller. Load is not what troubles you here; the set-up is, since you shift so often that the temptation grows to leave one stabiliser tucked in. Resist it, even for a quarter turn that lasts five minutes.

Brakes go on before you climb, nobody stands on the deck while the chassis rolls, and strong wind stops outdoor work. With columns one more rule joins the list: never use the pillar as a handhold. Hauling yourself up on a shaft, or pushing off it to travel half a metre along, sends the scaffold rolling out from under you. Leaning over the guardrail to just catch the far side belongs in exactly the same category, and it is the commonest way people come unstuck on a column.

Keep an eye as well on who is walking underneath. Columns stand by doors, stairs and passageways, and a brush dropped from five metres lands on somebody's shoulder there. Keep tools in the middle of the deck, hang the tin from a hook rather than balancing it on the edge, and tape the set-up off while you are up top. The remaining agreements around hiring a scaffold are summarised in the rules covering work at height.