Replacing decorative trim? Choose the right scaffold.

For replacing decorative trim under the eaves you take the Altrex RS51, a frame just 75 cm across the base. That narrow measurement is a gain rather than a loss here, because decorative trim often runs on over a bay window, past a downpipe or right along to the boundary line, and a wide tower will not follow it cleanly. The scaffold usually stands on the pavement or the drive as well, where a walkway has to be left. What else is available appears in the range of mobile towers you can hire.

On the 245 cm deck you work with timber longer than the floor you are standing on. A four metre length therefore does not go up in one piece; you cut it to size below and carry it up in sections, or have somebody pass it over the guard rail to you. Expect to be up and down a great deal, because the offering up happens aloft while the sawing happens down on the ground. That makes a solid, roomy ladder inside the tower count for more than extra deck width.

An RS52 at 135 cm only becomes interesting once two of you are working the same run and toolboxes, sealant guns and even a mitre saw have to stand up there alongside you. Above a front door or a bay you gain nothing from it, since what you want is to be close in against the wall. How the two of them compare is set out in the comparison of tower sizes across the hire fleet.

Measure to the top of the moulding and add the slack you need to get a crowbar in behind it. On a house of two storeys that line generally sits between four and six metres, which lands you in a 6 to 8 metre band. Where the trim runs round a dormer or carries on over a bay window the height varies from one stretch of wall to the next, so take your reading at the highest point on the run and book the tower for that.

The number on the order is your deck height with the two metres or so your arms add counted on top of it, so the floor you stand on always ends up lower than the figure you booked. For this work you want that floor sitting just below the moulding, so you can lever at chest height instead of above your head. Force applied with straight arms neither works properly nor spares the wall behind. What a given band means in parts is described on the page about eight metres of reach.

Do not forget that the new length has to go back up as well. Fitting means holding the profile in place with one hand and driving screws with the other, and for that you want a little clearance above your head for the drill. Book the tower too low and you are left balancing three metres of timber on tiptoe. On a wall of two storeys the upper build in this band is nearly always the right call.

Decorative trim is usually on the front of the house, which means the pavement, the drive or a narrow front garden. Look first at where the castors are able to stand: slabs are fine, a gravel path sinks under load and a planted border is hopeless. If the tower sits partly on the public footway, leave anyone on foot a clear way past and ask at the council what the rules are in your street. Arrange that a week before the set is delivered, and not on the morning the van arrives outside.

All sorts of things come down from under a moulding once it is loose: rotten timber, bent nails, lumps of old sealant and sometimes a slab of ancient paint. Fence off the zone beneath your working position with cones or a sheet, particularly where cars park or children walk past. The stabilisers occupy that ground too, so allow a strip a metre wider than the tower on either side. Move any parked cars out of the way before you start, because a dropped crowbar is not a theoretical problem.

Give some thought to your sawing position at ground level as well. The new lengths get cut to size and the corners mitred down there, on trestles beside the tower rather than up on the deck. So keep clear not only the footprint of the frame itself but room for a two metre bench beside it, with a socket within reach. Put that station too far away and every trial fitting costs you another walk across the garden.

Replacing decorative trim falls into two blocks with a gap between them. Stripping out and measuring costs one to two days: the moulding off, the fixing blocks inspected, the timber behind it checked and a clean section chosen to serve as a pattern. That section then goes off to the joinery works, and one to two weeks pass before the new lengths are ready for you. Fitting, sealing and painting takes another two to three days after that, and a corner house with trim round the return runs longer still.

Those intervening weeks are why you book twice rather than once at length. That is no problem, but it is worth knowing in advance: each booking opens with a day at the standard rate before 95 per cent comes off the days that follow it. Two separate periods of two days therefore carry two opening days between them. Build a spare day into the demolition block for that reason, and do exactly the same when you book the fitting block.

There is an alternative many people overlook. Where the moulding happens to start low enough, above a bay window or over a single storey extension, you can take one short sound length off first to serve as a pattern, without putting the whole elevation in scaffold. Then you only hire the tower once the new profile has arrived, and a single continuous period will do. Weigh that against the state of your old trim, since a rotten piece of moulding makes a useless pattern.

Never lever straight against the masonry itself. Put a block of wood under the crowbar so the load goes into timber rather than into a mortar joint or the edge of the render. Saw the moulding into lengths of about a metre first, and then each piece holds only a few nails and nothing drags anything else along with it. Nails that will not shift get punched through from behind or simply cut off, because pulling them out tears both the timber and the ground behind it.

Before anything comes down, capture the profile. Run a contour gauge over the cut end, or trace the section out onto a piece of stiff card, and photograph how the moulding meets the wall above and below. Then take the cleanest length down with you to serve as a pattern, because a drawing on its own gives a mill very little to work from. Do all of that on your first hire day, while the tower is still standing; going up again for a forgotten dimension costs a whole second period.

Fitting makes the corners the difficulty. On an old house an external angle is seldom a true right angle, so cut your mitre a degree or two generous and pare it back until it closes. Take that reading in place from the deck of the tower rather than off a drawing. Seal the top edge and the end joints afterwards but leave the joint along the bottom open, because any moisture that does find its way behind has to have somewhere to run out again.

Because you hire twice, you plan two deliveries. Put the first of them on the day before demolition starts, so the tower can go up unhurried and you begin on the moulding with a fresh morning ahead. Anything ordered up to 15:00 on a working day can arrive the working day afterwards, so long lead planning is unnecessary. Pin the second delivery down only once the joiner confirms your profile is ready, because a promised date at a mill slips by a week without much difficulty.

You receive a complete, counted set of parts, and putting it together is your own work, done with the manual and the Altrex video within reach. Lay the components out on the drive or along the wall, and never on the stretch of pavement the neighbours have to use. Building it again for the second period goes noticeably faster, since the order of the parts is already familiar. The stage by stage assembly guide covers what to watch at each level of the tower.

After each period the set is collected again, and you leave it dismantled and complete on the day agreed. Tally the components while the tower comes apart, so you know for certain that nothing has finished up in the pile of scrap timber. If you live nearby, collecting the set at Zeeburgerpad 89 in Amsterdam by appointment costs you nothing extra at all. The fixed figures for each province appear at the charges for bringing and fetching the set.

Replacing decorative trim means pushing sideways, and sideways is exactly what a tower minds. The deck itself copes without difficulty, since EN 1004 rates load class 3 at 200 kg for every square metre and you with a crowbar and a length of moulding stay well under that. Stability is the real question here, so run the stabilisers right out and never shove away from the wall while you are standing on the topmost level of the platform.

The ordinary rules hold in full. Brake the castors before you climb up, keep the deck clear while the tower is being moved along, and come down when the wind gets up. Moulding work adds one thing: a freed length of three metres is heavy and catches the wind at the same time. Hand it down to somebody below or lower it on a rope, and never pitch it over the rail unseen. More on that sits at the rules that apply at height.

Finally, look at what appears once the trim is off. Perished fixing blocks, a sunken wall plate or a nest behind the fascia all change the job halfway through, and sometimes a stretch of wall stands suddenly open. Do not carry on working until dark in that case; sheet the opening over instead, because an open junction that takes a night of rain costs more than an extra day of hire. Planning for extra work is covered in the checklist to run before you book.