Wallpapering a ceiling? Choose the right scaffold.

Indoors you arrive at the Altrex RS44, the room scaffold put together for exactly this sort of work. The chassis is low, the parts pass singly through an internal door from about 70 centimetres and the build climbs from 3 metres of working height to 4. That suits ceilings in living rooms and bedrooms, and a hall with a raised section above it. You could hire a mobile scaffold instead, but that is meant for outdoors and its broad foot rarely comes down a passage without marking the door frames on the way.

The deck measures 245 centimetres along its length, and on this job that is no side issue. Two people have to stand on it shoulder to shoulder with a folded length between them, and space still has to remain for the bucket and the paste brush. On a shorter platform you get in one another's way at the very moment the length hangs half attached and nobody can afford to let go. That length also decides how much ceiling one position covers, and so how often you both climb down to shift along.

A tower intended for a single user is no use here, however useful it is elsewhere: the MiTower deck runs 75 centimetres wide and will never take two people with a wet length between them. For a void, a landing or a stairwell rather different dimensions apply than for a plain room, so measure your ceiling height first and pick the model after that. Ceiling height, not the size of the room, is what settles the model. Which builds are usable inside a house sit together on the page about room scaffolds for indoor work.

With papering overhead you calculate the opposite way round from a facade: you start at the ceiling and count back down. You want to press with your forearms against the surface while your shoulders stay relaxed, and that happens when your head stays roughly twenty centimetres below the plaster. In a room of 2.60 metres the deck therefore sits low, and for a three metre ceiling you set it at about a metre. The build you fix then falls between 3 and 4 metres of working height.

That working height is your platform height with some two metres of reach above it, except that on a ceiling you deliberately leave part of that reach unused. Stretching with straight arms is exactly what has to be avoided, because you lose your grip on a wet length and it pulls out of true. Measure the room in two places, in the middle and close by the wall, since in older houses those differ by a few centimetres you can never win back afterwards. A thick carpet lifts you a little as well.

Stand too high and you catch fresh paper with your head or your shoulder and press the length into the paste. Stand too low and you work with straight arms, and your shoulders have seized up by the third length. When hiring you therefore look mainly at the settings available at the bottom of the range and far less at what the model manages at full stretch. Look at a build up to four metres to see which setting belongs to it, then match that against the height you measured.

The room has to be empty, and emptier than it would be for painting. You do not simply roll the set-up back and forth; there is a pasting table standing beside it too, on which the lengths get their coat. Put that table at the end you begin from and keep the route between the two entirely open, so whoever feeds the length up has no chair leg or rolled up runner to step over. Should a bucket go over, you want no cupboard or mop in the way either.

Protection goes under the wheels: card, thin board or a sheet that will not slide about. Paste landing on laminate or parquet and sitting there an hour leaves a mark behind, and the wheels of a scaffold press their weight onto a very small area indeed. Watch the stabilisers as well, since they foul skirting boards and radiators, and mind the thresholds between rooms. Moving from room to room, take the build apart rather than levering it over a threshold, which is how castors and door bars both get damaged.

Finally, give some thought to what is in the ceiling. A light, a smoke alarm or a fixing point sits almost always precisely where your length is going, so take the fitting out and switch the circuit off before wet hands pass anywhere near a cable. Tape the hole over, measure its position from two walls and cut it open only once the paper is up and properly dry. That way the room is finished in one go, with no ladder trip afterwards to cut out a fitting you could have reached from the deck.

Wallpapering a ceiling goes quicker than people expect; getting there beforehand does not. Steaming old paper off, washing the residue away, filling holes and laying a coat of size on takes a full day in an average living room. That size then has to dry before anything wet goes over it. Only on the second day does the first length meet the ceiling, and with two of you a room of four by five metres is filled in half a day, provided the lengths are already cut.

For a single room that works out at two or three hire days, and more the moment a void or a second space joins in. Inside that period the waiting cannot be struck out: the drying of the size, the soaking time of the old paper and the curing of the final length. Ventilation helps, a draught straight through the room does not, because then the seams open. Unlike decorating a room indoors, which is fine in stages, a ceiling wants filling in one continuous session.

Booking wide is cheap on indoor work. The full amount is settled over that opening twenty-four hours, after which each further day is reduced by ninety-five per cent, so a margin of one day hardly touches your rental price. The room is already cleared and the set-up is already standing, so hurrying buys you nothing at all, least of all a better finish overhead. For a bigger job, work your period out against the explanation of how many days.

A pasted length is folded on the table into a concertina and laid over your forearm. Up on the platform one of you fixes the head of the length and smooths it home, while the other holds the remainder aloft and pays it out bit by bit. With 245 centimetres of deck underfoot the pair of you shuffle sideways together for as long as the length runs. Reach the end of the boards and somebody has to climb down and move the set-up, which is where a length goes crooked.

Here lies the difference with related work. When papering a high wall the length hangs vertically and its own weight helps you pull it taut and straight; above your head that same weight works the other way entirely and drags the paper off the surface. And unlike painting a ceiling, where a roller on a pole lets one person manage perfectly well, here two of you stand on the same deck with a bucket between you, and the deck has to be long enough to allow it.

When wallpapering a ceiling you plan your positions along the direction of the lengths rather than across them. Begin at the window, so the seams face away from the light coming in, and shift by one length width plus a small margin each time. What people underestimate is how much has to travel up: the bucket of paste, a wide smoothing brush, a seam roller, a sharp knife with spare blades and a damp cloth. Anything forgotten means climbing down while paper hangs overhead waiting for a hand.

The set reaches your door counted and complete as loose parts, never as an erected tower. On indoor work that is genuinely convenient, because you carry the tubes and deck sections through one at a time to the room where they belong. Clear the hallway beforehand and lay a runner down for dirty boots and tubes. Book on a working day and get the order in before 15:00, and the parts are at your front door the following working day.

The delivery day and the return day are both pinned by you. For wallpapering a ceiling, have the set arrive on the day you clear the room, so the afternoon goes on assembly and the next morning starts with sizing. Putting it together is your part: the manual shows the order and an instruction film comes with it that you follow on a phone. Work indoors in socks or wipe the wheels before rolling them into the room, and there is less to clean afterwards.

Once the last length is up you take the build apart and we drive the parts away again. Gather them in the hall or outside by the door and count them as you stack. Living close by, you can pick the set up free of charge from Zeeburgerpad 89 in Amsterdam once an appointment is made, assuming your car takes the length. What the delivery to your province comes to is listed at the prices for bringing and fetching.

The deck the two of you stand on may carry 200 kilos per square metre, which appears within EN 1004 as load class 3. When wallpapering a ceiling that is not idle information: two adults, a bucket of paste, a stack of lengths and a small table of tools reach that figure sooner than a decorator with a roller ever would. Spread your weight along the length of the platform and keep the bucket out of the corner you are both smoothing in.

The brakes go on before a first boot touches the step, and the set-up never moves while somebody is standing up there. Indoors that is a real trap: shifting half a metre seems far too small a thing to climb down for, particularly with a length draped over your arm. Do it anyway. Then check that every stabiliser is wound out again and that no foot is resting on a skirting board or a cable duct, because either one leaves the set-up standing out of level without showing it.

The risks on this job sit in the paste. Anything dripping onto the boards turns them slippery, so lay card over the deck and swap it as soon as it soaks through. Take hold of the guardrail with dry hands, keep the step clear of tools lying about and never lean over the edge to catch that final twenty centimetres; move the set-up once more instead. The remainder is set down in the overview of rules for height.