Painting a gate? Choose the right scaffold.

The Altrex MiTower is the model that suits here: just 75 cm across, sized for a single user and light enough to shift unaided. That last point is the strongest argument on gate work, because you keep nudging the build along a plane wider than your reach. Choosing to hire a mobile scaffold of the broad sort would only add hauling on a drive where space is short as it is. The versions available are shown under the MiTower we hire out.

The 75 cm this base measures often drops in exactly between the gate opening and whatever stands next to it: a hedge, a low wall, a wheelie bin or the car still parked in front of the house. Stand on the street side and that width leaves a footway clear for people going past. On the garden side you usually get in between a border and the path as well, without treading a single plant flat. A wider base would plant one leg in the border at every position.

The platform of 245 cm is the measurement that really counts on a gate. A single leaf of a double drive gate is often just as wide, so you work it top to bottom from one standing position. On a narrow garden gate set in a fence you even keep room for your kettle and your abrasives. That is the difference from a ladder, where you move every half metre and carry the tools in your pocket. Caught between this model and an ordinary wheeled one, the comparison of the two settles it.

Working height on this job is your platform height with something like two metres of reach on top, and on a gate that sum lands lower than it does on facade work. The leaves themselves usually stay under two metres. What rises above them are the piers, the head rail or the arch the gate hangs in, and now and then a cap or a lantern on top of that. It is the highest of those that decides what you order, not the top edge of the gate.

The model spans 4.2 to 6.2 metres, and on a gate you work in the lowest stands: a build reaching 4 to 6 metres of working height covers everything here. Even for a low garden gate you hire that bottom stand, simply because it is the smallest build this model has. Where the gate sits in a brick wall with tall piers and an arch above it, you touch the six metres. Order that stand and the cap on top of a pier is still within comfortable reach.

Take your measurement from the paving the castors end up on, and allow for a drive that generally falls away towards the road. Set the build on the low side and thirty centimetres of reach vanish at the top. Choosing too tight bites you in exactly one place, the head of a pier, which you then end up doing off a stepladder after all. Hiring one stand higher costs you nothing in build time. The page on a six metre reach shows what such a build delivers.

The first question is not where it stands most conveniently but where the gate can still pass. Chalk the swing of both leaves onto the paving if that helps, and keep that area free. Put the build alongside it, on the hinge side or just outside the furthest point the leaf reaches. Then you need not move anything the moment somebody wants to get through. It also saves your fresh paint, since a leaf scraping a standard hits precisely the work you have just done.

The ground at a drive is usually block paving, slabs or concrete, and all three serve well. Watch for the rebate or the track of a sliding gate, a drainage channel running across the entrance and a threshold a castor can drop into. Gravel is more awkward: the wheels sink in and boards have to go under the stabilisers. On grass beside a garden gate the same holds, certainly after a wet week when a leg settles a few centimetres unnoticed.

Then look at what surrounds the opening. A letterbox, an intercom post, a low hedge, bins or a parked car together decide how much room is left for the stabilisers. If the gate gives onto a public road, keep a way past for pedestrians and check whether your council has rules about it. Shift the bin and the bikes the evening before, because doing it on the morning itself eats into your first coat. How to cope with a sloping entrance is described under working on uneven ground.

Cost this job by face and by coat and your planning will hold. First you sand the existing work back, lift off loose paint and deal with rust spots or rotten timber. Then comes a primer and finally two covering coats. Every round runs on the street side and again on the garden side, so you have passed the same plane six times before it is finished. A gate with bars or slats adds four sides to every element on top of that.

Between those rounds sits drying time that refuses to be hurried, and out of doors the weather hangs on it as well. A morning with rain or too much wind you simply skip. In practice a double drive gate lands on three to four hire days and a single garden gate on two, and that is before you have allowed for a single setback. Book the whole stretch at once rather than as two separate bookings. What others allow for a period like this appears in the overview of hire periods.

Those extra days weigh lightly in what you pay. Day one alone goes at the full rate, and each day after it is counted with ninety-five per cent taken away, so booking wide is cheaper here than taking the tower twice in short blocks. That is welcome, because a gate stranded halfway through its primer is not something you want hanging there. Set your collection a day past your final coat and spend that morning striking the build and clearing the drive.

Work leaf by leaf and from the top downwards. With 245 cm of platform you usually stand right for a single leaf of a drive gate in one go, finishing the head rail, the middle field and the bottom rail one after another without shifting anything. On bars or slats you work vertically, element by element, because half a slat drying off leaves a line you will never lose again. A double gate therefore means two positions per face, with the joint on the closing gap.

For the second face you do not move the scaffold, you move the gate. Swing the leaf open until it stands beside your build and the back is within reach, or fix it in whatever position you are working in. That way the tower shifts only once per face. Do not forget the closing edges and the hinge side either: those two narrow faces show themselves only with the gate half open, and that is exactly where paint begins to let go.

Take little up with you, because this is a one-person build and everything you set on the deck comes out of your own space. A kettle, a brush, a block of abrasive and a rag will do. The number of positions catches people out: two leaves, two faces and three coats runs to dozens of fresh starts, each one a set of brakes off and brakes on again. If the railings beside the opening go in the same round, see painting railings, which adds a day or two.

The scaffold turns up at the kerb as separate parts, counted and complete. Say in advance where they may lie, and make sure that spot is not inside the swing of the gate, or you will be moving the whole stack before you begin. A drive, a garage or a strip of grass beside the entrance answers well. Reservations that come in on a weekday ahead of 15:00 travel out to you on the next working day. Pick a date that lands the set before your first dry morning.

Assembly we leave to you. A manual comes in the load, and the video runs through which part goes where; this build goes together single-handed, which suits a job you are standing outside on your own for anyway. We deliver nothing erected. Delivery day and collection day are both yours, so you can match the drop to the first day dry enough to sand. Collecting it yourself costs nothing, by appointment, from the yard at Zeeburgerpad in Amsterdam, provided the long parts fit your vehicle.

Once the final coat is on we return for the material. Striking the build and stacking it complete is yours to do, preferably within carrying distance of the road, so the gate need not stand open all morning waiting for the van. Hold off until the paint is hard enough to walk past carrying scaffold tubes, or you will read that day off your leaf later. Count the parts through as you stack them. What the run to your province costs is under the delivery and collection rates.

The platform takes 200 kg on a square metre and no more, that being load class 3 in EN 1004. On gate work you never come near it, standing up there alone with a kettle of paint and some abrasive. More to the point is that this model is built for a single person: let nobody climb up beside you to pass something, not even for a few seconds. Handing up is done from the ground, with a bucket on a rope if it comes to that.

Brakes on before you climb, and the build moves only with nothing and no one on it. Obvious enough, but on a gate you reposition more often than you would guess. There is a risk of its own here as well: a leaf pushed open by the wind or by a passer-by and slammed against the standards. So fix the gate in the position you are working in, with a hook, a wedge or a rope, and warn the household that the drive is out of use.

Outdoor work also means stopping once it starts to blow hard, since an open gate leaf catches every bit as much wind as you do. Watch for wet paving, moss along the boundary and spilt paint on your platform, which turns glassy the moment you pivot on it. Keep the ground beneath you free of tools and buckets, however wide the entrance looks, since a bucket left on the drive is what a swinging leaf finds first. More on steadying a build sits under bracing and anchoring a tower.