Painting a windowsill? Choose the right scaffold.

For gloss on one or two sills at first floor level you hire a mobile scaffold in its narrowest form, the Altrex MiTower. That tower measures 75 cm across, is intended for a single user and stays light enough to roll along the elevation without help. You shift position for every window, which on an average front means three or four set-ups. A tower one person can move beats a heavy build here every time, and on a terraced front that difference decides your day. Heights and stages are listed under the MiTower in our hire fleet.

Going wider brings you nothing on this job. What travels up with you is a tin of gloss, a narrow brush, a sanding block, a filling knife and a roll of tape, and that occupies half a deck. What you genuinely need is room along the elevation, and a front garden with a hedge or a planted border makes that room scarce. A tower 135 cm across often cannot pass, while the indoor room model is out because it belongs inside the house.

With a platform length of 245 cm you normally stand in front of a whole window opening at once, and sometimes two narrow ones side by side. That settles how often you reposition. Measure the spacing between your openings before you reserve and count the set-ups you will need. Widely spaced windows are no obstacle, but they do stretch the hire period, since every move costs a quarter of an hour of setting down and levelling. See also the dimensions of the towers we hire out.

The figure you give us is a working height: whatever the deck stands at, plus about two metres you can still reach above it. On this job you deliberately leave that reach unused. A sill on the first floor sits around three metres above the pavement, and you want it under your eyes instead of over your head. The build for four to six metres lets you put the deck exactly where it suits you, because nothing obliges you to run the tower out to its limit.

When painting a windowsill you set the deck half a metre to a metre under it, so not level with the bottom rail of the frame. Stand at that rail and you are looking along the surface rather than onto it, which means you cannot see where the gloss lies too thick or where a brush mark has stayed standing. Half a metre lower and you look down on the sill, your forearm sits at a workable angle and the brush reaches right into the corner by the jamb.

Measure from the level the castors will stand on. Where a drive falls away towards the street, or a lowered strip runs along a basement window, your build starts lower and you want a stage or two more. Take the roomier build in that case, since an intermediate height cannot be added once the tower is up and the tin is open. Note the deck height for each window and you set the next one right first time. Look too at the demands of work on the first floor.

Painting a windowsill means standing right beneath the window rather than off to one side of it. On a sill you are looking down onto the surface, so a set-up two metres along the wall does you no good at all. Look therefore at what lies directly under your windows. In a front garden that is often a border, a low hedge or a strip of gravel; on the street side there is usually a car or a cycle rack exactly where you need to be, and that is not solved on the morning itself.

The tower is narrow, but the four stabilisers splay outwards and want half a metre extra on every side. In a strip a metre wide between wall and hedge that will not fit unless something is moved or cut back first. Watch for a basement light or an access cover under the window as well, because a base plate has no business standing on either. Lay boards over soft garden soil so the castors cannot sink while you are up there with a wet brush.

If the tower ends up on the pavement, warn the neighbours and keep a walking route free for pedestrians and pushchairs. Ask the council whether that is permitted once the tower takes up part of the footway. Far better arranged a week ahead than on the morning of your first gloss day with everything already built. Getting a set-up stable on a footway that falls away is covered in this piece on uneven ground under a tower.

Painting a windowsill is little work per sill and a great deal of work per elevation. For each one you sand back to a matt, sound surface, fill and prime the bare patches, and then two coats of gloss go on. Between those coats it has to harden through. Four or five sills across the front means four or five runs through the same sequence, which puts you at three to four hire days even though each sill holds an hour of real work.

What keeps the days short is the dew. A horizontal face cools faster than the wall around it, so moisture settles there in the morning and comes back there first in the evening. In spring and autumn that leaves a working window of roughly six hours: start only when the sill feels dry, and stop well before the air cools again. Reckon on that when you plan your hire days, because two half days one after another yield less than you hope.

Booking generously is therefore close to free. The full rate applies over the first twenty four hours alone, and every hire day beyond that has 95 per cent taken off, so a day of slack for mist or rain vanishes into the whole. Book too keenly and a filled sill without gloss on it is waiting for you when the van pulls up, which is the dearest way there is to save a day. Rates sit on the page of fixed hire charges.

When painting a windowsill the film thickness settles both how it looks and how long the finish lasts. Gloss does not run here the way it does on a jamb, so whatever you put on stays put. Work thinly and lay every stroke right out, even though it feels mean at the time. Two thin coats hold for years; a heavy one stays tacky for weeks, collects dust off the street and after a single winter lifts along the front edge like a skin.

Keep an eye on the drip groove under the front edge while you lay off. That narrow slot makes rainwater drop clear instead of tracking back to the brickwork. Get gloss into it and the groove is closed, so the water finds its way inside after all. Hold it open with a narrow brush, wipe the bottom edge with a cloth and check it from the deck with a fingertip. That is precisely why you want to be under the sill and not alongside it.

Each set-up covers one window and occasionally two. A 245 cm deck leaves you standing broad enough to take both corners of the sill without stretching, and that matters: the corners by the jambs are where old gloss splits first. Carry everything up in one trip and never stand your tin on the sill itself, because your fresh coat is going there and a ring of gloss will not come out of it again.

Both dates, the one it arrives on and the one it leaves on, are yours to enter while reserving. Anything ordered before 15:00 on a working day leaves us on the next working day. For gloss work outdoors, study the forecast first: you want a run of dry days with no night frost and no mist hanging about in the mornings. Have the components brought a day ahead of your first gloss day, so that building does not eat into your dry hours.

You receive a counted set of loose parts, and that same set has to be complete when it goes back. Choose a spot beforehand where that stack can lie without blocking the pavement or the drive. If your house stands on a busy street, put the parts in the front garden or behind the gate instead. Collecting the set yourself is possible by appointment in Amsterdam and costs nothing, provided your transport can take the longest tubes.

Putting the tower together falls to you, working from the manual in the box with the video on our site playing alongside. We put no tower up for you and deliver none standing. At this height one person can manage it, because you build on upwards from the deck you are already standing on. After your final coat we come for the parts again on the date you entered. Fixed amounts per province are listed under the charges for each delivery region.

The platform you stand on falls under load class 3 of EN 1004 and carries up to 200 kg on each square metre. When painting a windowsill you never approach that figure, because a litre tin and a little sanding gear weigh nothing at all. What you do want to keep in mind is that this is a build for one person. Have anyone passing you a tin stay on the ground and send it up on a line, rather than two of you standing on the deck together.

Put the castor brakes on before you climb and leave them on for as long as you are up there. Never move the tower with yourself or your materials still aboard, even when it is only to the next window along. In strong wind you stop altogether: three metres up along a front you are standing in the gust that comes round the corner of the house, and an open tin of gloss in one hand is the last thing you want then.

Dew makes the deck slippery in the morning, which goes badly with gloss on the soles of your boots. Wipe it dry before you start and lay a cloth under the tin. Think about what is happening below you as well: a brush rolling off a sill lands on the pavement where people walk, so keep your kit inside the guardrail. Do not carry on into the half dark either, because film thickness on a flat face stops being readable in that last hour.