![]() This gave the walk planks the additional structure we needed, ensuring the planks would easily support us while working on the wall, reducing the risk of injury, and saving me from Wendy's onslaught.įeeling good about our decisions and progress we decided to go ahead and construct our scaffolding, and this is where things got a little dicey. I ended up buying two 12' lengths a of tight grain 2x10 lumber, and then I screwed a 10' 2x4 to the underside of each walk plank in a perpendicular manner. If I survived the fall, Wendy's ongoing ridicule and "I told you so" mentality would last an eternity. ![]() ![]() ![]() The last thing I needed was for my scaffolding to come crashing down while at full height. You're only supposed to use regular lumber on an 8' unsupported span, and my span was going to be longer, making it more dangerous to place too much weight on the walk board. The walk plank was a little more difficult. I screwed several pieces of 2x4 together with staggered joints, making the 24' length I'd need, but I only needed to purchase six 2x4s for each post. I took all of my measurements and determined I'd need two 24' long 4x4 posts, one for each side of the scaffolding, and a 12' long walking plank with a 10' foot unsupported span.įor the posts I'd have difficulty both acquiring and then hauling/handling 24' 4x4 poles, so I used a trick shown on the Qualcraft website. The Qualcraft Pump Jack Steel scaffolding system consists of only the items necessary for affixing the system to the wall and to support and lift/lower the walking platform, the rest of the system can be built from standard off the shelf lumber.Īfter this Home Enthusiast told us about the system I immediately started looking around and researching. He and his wife had done some similar work in the past and used a scaffolding product called "Pump Jack." That's when a coworker of Wendy's at the time, who is also a home enthusiast (that name is so much better than "DIYer") offered up a suggestion. There we were, stuck, so many options, so little know how. Most systems consisted of poles and walk planks much longer than three of our car could accommodate, let alone just one small trunk. Though we could have rented a larger system, I worried about how long we'd need it, how much it would cost, how easily we could build it ourself, and how we'd actually get it from the store to our house in our tiny Mustang. But have you looked at the various options for scaffolding lately? You have everything ranging from the most basic and death defying. Through all of our options, a scaffolding system seemed to be the most straight forward, realistic, and possibly safest way about this problem. But if we went this route how long would we have needed it? How expensive would that have been? What about the really long pieces, wouldn't I need help on both sides? How do you drive and where do you park one of these? Would I get pulled over if I were driving it up and down the street (because there's almost no way I wouldn't do that)? And what's the likelihood I'd somehow lose control of the basket and end up either driving myself into power lines or tipping the whole thing over while hoisted many feet above the ground? I've watched YouTube, I know what happens. Okay, renting a cherry picker might have actually worked, and I would have had a killer toy for a little while, giving neighborhood friends rides up and down the street at about 25 feet above the ground. "Could I lean ladders up against the house and just do all of my work that way?" My internal dialog was like an arguing six year old trying desparately to come up with a solution over all logic. I tried to noodle my way trough my dilemma, albeit unsuccessfully, but coming up with a series of brilliant ideas that made a simpleton resemble Mike Holmes. The answer to our quandary seemed simple enough: "put up scaffolding." But having never worked on scaffolding, let alone with actually building my own scaffolding, I feared going this route was yet another recipe in our smorgasbord for disaster, and I was the main ingredient in this course of the meal. We were faced with a very narrow alley to the side of our home and about 22 vertical feet we had to somehow scale while first removing, then preparing for, then installing a whole lot of siding. It was a simple dilemma, but one whose solution seemed to evade us. How am I going to do the work all the way at the top of the house?.Though our siding to do list was growing rather than shrinking, we had accomplished most everything we could without addressing the ugly nine headed gorilla in the room of "how are we going to work up high on the side of the house?"
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