I am at a quandry with what to do with these relics of a bygone era.(Naturally,I can't make them dissapear,and do not have the funds to convert to baseboard heat.)I was told to paint them aluminium color by an interior designer,Cast Iron color by a friend,Linen white by my house painters,and now my girlfriend suggests radiator covers.I bought two cans of spray paint,high heat aluminum and high heat cast iron.I guess the best thing to do is paint one in each color,then decide.
An Eames chair will br relatively close to one,and a Womb chair near another.Anybody have experience with these?
If you can't find acceptable covers,
then I would just go with the trim color of the room. Except don't use latex paint because it can't take the constant hot/cold/hot cycle and will dry out and crack, and then you could get rust and pitting. At least that's what happened with the latex-painted steam radiator in my old house.
High heat paint is a good practical choice but it only comes in white, black and maybe red.
You could always do bronzing powders, which is what they used on them in the old days. I think they might work best on bare metal, though. I had a bunch of vials of them that i got at auction years ago---cool stuff. Kinda messy, though.
Spanky, your bronze powders
may be just that, bronze powder. Or, more specifically, various alloys ground to fine texture. We used them at a museum where I worked to make temporary cosmetic touch-ups to chipped gilded picture frames on exhibit. The vials were about 3/4" diameter X 3" long. Typically, these are simply dry powdered metal and require mixing with a binder and appropriate solvent to make a paint. Like brass and bronze, though, they tend to turn a darker brown over time as they oxidize.
Perhaps more troubling
is locating valuable furniture too close to steam radiators. Heat is never a good thing for wood, leather, fabrics, or upholstery foam and those regulator valves have been known to occasionally fail and spew steam and/or hot water. I had a desk totalled by the latter when I was away for a few days.
Steam punk radiators.
Almost thirty years ago, I refinished all of the old 1934 radiators in my house. Due to their poor condition, I did the following:
Firstly, with the help of a friend, we took the raditors to be stripped. Once back, I then rented a sandblaster and removed most of the rust and all of the remaining paint. After removing all of the leftover sand settled within the sections of the radiators, I then tack clothed and sprayed the radiators with two coats of Rustoleum rusty metal primer (spray cans found at any hardware store in the US) and two coats of their enamel paint. At the time, the high heat version was not available. Today, all of the radiators look brand new with no signs of paint loss, rust or degradation.
Be mindful, however, that Rustoleum's color selection for their oil-based enamels is limiting. Also, radiators were once painted with a silver coating that actually impeded some of the heat from going in to the room. Once this original coating is removed, you may find the radiators running hotter.
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