Painting bargeboards? Choose the right scaffold.

Bargeboards hang above you. Your head stays tipped back against timber that runs away on a slope and carries the eaves overhang underneath. The tower for that is the RS52, the wide Altrex model, 135 cm between the uprights. On a deck that size you can take half a pace back to judge whether the line is holding straight, rather than ending up pressed to the guardrail, and that scrap of distance separates a flat gloss from a wavering one. Widths are compared on the page listing the tower sizes you can book.

The slimmer RS51 at 75 cm does turn up on this work, but you give away deck exactly where you wanted space for a sander, a trailing lead and a kettle standing open. A MiTower is out the moment the apex passes 6.2 metres, which on a gable end it nearly always has, and a room scaffold belongs indoors rather than alongside a roof. That leaves the wide tower, built high enough to clear the point where the two lengths meet each other.

Reckon on the number of times you go up and down as well. Each coat sends you aloft with very little in your hands, yet it sends you back to the same spot three or four times over the week. A generous build with a roomy hatch and a proper climb makes those trips bearable, especially when a bucket of water and a rag come along to keep the timber free of dust between coats. Weigh the trips in when you pick a tower, not just the reach.

This job tops out at the apex rather than at the gutter, since that is where the two lengths run into each other. Stand your tape at the level the castors will settle on and carry the line right up to that tip. The figure you enter when booking is a working height, and it is made of the platform height with about 2 metres of reach added on top, so that arms raised will meet the last stretch of timber without any stretching from the toes.

On a terraced house with an ordinary pitch the apex sits at eight to ten metres. On a property of three storeys, or one with a steep roof, it runs on towards twelve. That is why painting bargeboards falls in the eight to twelve metre band. Caught between two builds? Compare the platform settings behind a ten metre working height and hold them against the figure your own tape gave along the gable, well before the order goes in.

Hiring short bites harder here than it does on flat wall work. The timber runs uphill, so a build that falls a little shy leaves the top metre and a half untouched, and an unpainted patch sits precisely at the apex where the whole street can see it. Reaching that from a ladder leaned against fresh gloss is no answer. Measure on the tall side, since a build one platform taller costs very little next to a second visit from the van. There is a method at working the height out beforehand.

A gable end is rarely the side of the house with the best ground. Usually there is a narrow band of gravel, a planted border or the path through to the back, and that is exactly where the base of the tower has to land with four stabilisers reaching out at an angle. Walk that band before you hire a mobile scaffold and take away whatever is loose: a water butt, a few spare slabs, the children's bikes. Making room takes half an hour, shuffling things about mid job takes half a day.

Mind the gap to the wall as well. The eaves overhang stands proud above you, so the tower cannot sit tight against the brickwork without the top rail fouling the gutter. Leave a hand's width and check it before you build, because a position you have to wrestle into place at the top will never come level again. On a path that falls away, take up the difference on the spindles under the castors, a move described in setting a tower on ground that is not flat.

Spare a thought for the neighbours too, since a gable end often abuts their drive or their garden. You are there for days on end, you raise dust with the paper and you drop the odd spot of paint, so sheet whatever lies below and say what you have in mind. If part of the base lands on council ground beside the pavement, ask the council what is permitted there. That question belongs well before the delivery day, not on the morning the first tubes are already at your gate.

Two lengths on an ordinary roof come to perhaps fifteen metres of timber. Abrading and dusting off fills the first day, the primer goes on in a morning and so does the gloss. Even so you hire three to four days, because between those steps sit waits that cannot be squeezed: each coat has to harden before the next may cover it, and the tin in your hand is the thing that states how long. Those hours count inside your hire period all the same.

The way the rate is built helps with that. Your first twenty four hours are charged whole, and each further day of rental joins them with ninety five per cent taken off, so a day spent waiting for primer to go hard, doing nothing at all, costs next to nothing. What your own build comes to is worked out on the page setting out the rates. Book the longer period rather than the tighter one, because a half painted board will not wait for a fresh reservation.

Weather has its say as well. Paint on outside timber wants dry conditions and not too much cold, and a board sitting in full afternoon sun skins over sooner than you would like. So read the outlook for the whole week instead of the day you mean to start. If it turns against you, push the collection date back; you decide yourself how long the tower stays standing. A margin of one day is no luxury on work that is broken into coats.

A deck of 245 cm sets how the job is broken up, because that length is as far as one position will carry you. Unlike a flat wall, a position here does not cover a rectangle but a slanting piece of timber: at one end of the deck the board is level with the guardrail, at the other it sits a good way above your head. So each position finishes a sloping strip rather than a band at one fixed level, and that changes the order in which the tower travels.

Begin at the apex and work down towards the gutter. Doing it that way, every next position only ever asks you to come down: you lift the top platform out and hang it a notch lower, instead of building back up again halfway along. Move with a bare deck, so the kettle and the sander go to the ground before the castors are unlocked. Two people shift this tower quicker than one, and beside a gable end that is usually pleasanter anyway.

What catches people out is the number of stops. A bargeboard is one continuous line and every place you break off with wet paint shows up afterwards as a faint edge. So finish the full depth of the timber within a position, carrying it to a joint or a bracket, and let the overlap fall just past that point. Before you climb, line up what has to come with you: kettle, brush, rag, tape and a scrap of paper for the patch you can still spot up top.

The tower turns up in loose pieces, as a set that arrives counted and complete. Orders that are settled by 15:00 on a weekday go out on the round of the next working day. Choose in advance where those pieces are allowed to land, because the band beside the gable is narrow and you need it clear to build in. Better the drive or a slab of pavement than the planted border, and nobody enjoys lifting tubes out of wet grass.

Putting it together is left to you. Instructions travel with the parts, and there is footage online taking you through the order of assembly from the base up; at this height two pairs of hands are busy with it for a good hour and a half. Slot the build into the day before your first go with the paper, so the following morning starts with work rather than with assembly. Pick a delivery date at the front of a dry spell as well, since tightening couplings in the rain is slow going.

Once the final coat is on you take the tower apart and set the pieces together in one lot; on the collection date you named, we come by and load them. Hold off until the gloss has properly hardened, or a tube taps against fresh work and you have a repair on your hands. The fixed figures per province for the run out and the run back are listed under what delivery comes to in your province, so the total is known while you plan.

Every square metre of decking may carry 200 kg, precisely what load class 3 permits under EN 1004. Painting bargeboards keeps you a long way inside that, since one person, a kettle and a sander together weigh very little. The figure only becomes interesting once somebody joins you up there and a bucket of water is standing about as well. What the class covers in practice is unpacked in this explanation of the tower standard and where its limits sit.

None of the usual rules change for this work: lock the castors before you climb, roll the tower only when it is empty of people and kit, and put the brush down as soon as the wind gets up. You reach that point sooner beside a gable than elsewhere, because there is seldom anything on that side of a house to break a gust. Glance along all four stabilisers whenever the tower has shifted, even for half a metre of travel beneath the timber.

The risk peculiar to this job is overhead. You are looking up while spreading paint, so spots land on your face and dust from the paper finds your eyes; goggles and a cap earn their place more than you would expect. Never balance the kettle loose on the guardrail, hang it from a hook or wedge it against an upright, and keep the ground beneath the tower free. There is more on the page covering the rules for working at height.