Giving your radiator a new lease of life

When you spend time redecorating your home you can find that the skirting boards, ceiling and even the column radiators in your property start to look a bit tired and in need of a bit of a freshen up themselves. Painting all of these areas is fairly easy but there are a few things that you should consider when painting column radiators or another other type of radiator in your property.

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The first thing that you should ensure you do before commencing painting is to turn your radiator off. This may seem like the most obvious thing to do but it can be easy to forget the timings that you have set for your heating, only to find the radiator warming up mid coat of paint. You want your radiator to be completely cold before you attempt to start painting it. This is partly due to the obvious safety issues but also because the paint will not take properly if the radiator is warm.

You should open the windows in the immediate area of the radiator and clear away any furniture items as well as giving the radiator and the surrounding area a quick hoover and clean to make sure that you remove and dust and debris that can become caught in the paint. Placing a splash cover or ground sheet underneath the radiator will help to protect your carpet and flooring from paint splashes and drips that inevitably occur. If you don’t have a ground cover some old sheets will work just as well.

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Radiators tend to pick up lot of dirt an even grease so your next step should always be to give the surface a good clean with a wet cloth and some washing up liquid or other detergent. After the radiator has fully dried you can start to and the surface down. By lightly sanding the surface you provide a rough area for the paint to adhere to. If you skip this step you can find that once dried, your paint peels off or drips into small pools. Giving yourself an even surface to paint onto will help to ensure that you have a smooth finish once you have painted. Once you have finished sanding you shod once again wipe the radiator down and hoover the area to remove any small particles.

Now you are ready to prime the radiator. To do this you should purchase either a specialist radiator primer or a standard metal primer will work just as well. After applying a full coat of primer, you should allow this to dry fully before moving onto the paint. You have now reached the final stage and can add your paint to the radiator. Again, this could be radiator or metal paint. Once the paint has dried fully you can stand back and admire your handy wok.