04.08.2010

Painting the chimney

A reader in the UK recently sent us several photographs he collected for our Death Wish series, today’s pick sadly has no details apart from what you can see.

They were taken of a painter working on repainting the outside of a terrace house, (several homes joined together). The client likes cream while his neighbour clearly prefers pale blue.

So after painting the façade the last job is to paint the chimney, our man has set up his roof ladder – well we say a roof ladder – it actually looks a little like a regular extending ladder with a cloth underneath to stop it from slipping?
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Spot the man on the chimney

Then having successfully transferred from his long - possibly six metres or so - main ladder to his ‘roof ladder’ he has reached the chimney and then climbed up onto it and painted the top front.

The number of risks he has had to take to do this job are amazing – the transfer from the main ladder would have been a challenge itself given the way it is set up, then if as we believe his ladder is purely resting on the roof, climbing it would have risked causing it ti slip off of the roof and one assumes that he painted a good deal of the chimney from it?
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He has a ladder on the roof and decides that this is the best way to reach the front of the chimney

Next stop is climbing up onto the chimney and then as he stretches down as far as he can with his paint brush, he risks falling forward. Finally he has to repeat all of the steps to return safely to the ground- all with pain and brush in hand!
And we have'nt mentioined the challenge of getting the 'roof ladder' up there!

Definitely a Death Wish.