It's gotten a bit chilly the last week or so here in Brooklyn. And since the house is missing a lot of doors, windows, insulation and such--it's freaking cold in here! It might even be warmer outside right about now. When Eric and I returned from a wedding in Massachusetts on Saturday (where it was 30 degree--no kidding!) the need for heat became absolute paramount. Unfortunately we returned to a disheartening site: the radiators were hooked up but the heat wasn't actually functioning yet. But more disturbing was that they were hooked up in this state:
Yes, that is an extremely rusty radiator, with all sorts of dirt and crap inside of it. I really, really want to know what sub-sub-contractor monkey thought that a radiator in this state was ready to be hooked up and turned on. What makes things worse is that the radiators were in pretty good condition before they were removed at the beginning of the construction, but they were put outside in the backyard for a few months and left uncovered. Then they were rained up many, many times. Eric and I noticed this months ago, but figured part of the plan was to later take apart the radiators and fix them up. Clearly we were being overly optimistic.
Faced with just a day or two left before the heat would be turned on, Eric and I decided to tackle the radiators ourselves. We figured that made more sense than pulling Tim's guys off a task we were incapable of doing.
We only had one day to do this (Sunday) so there was no time to actually take the radiators apart, clean them and put them back together. Instead we decided to get as much surface rust off as possible, clean them and prime them. We knew we wouldn't have time to paint, but the radiators will need to be removed again when the floor get installed, so we figure we can put the finish coat on then.
First we gathered our tools:
We picked up a few different sized wire brushes, as well as some various shaped and grained wire sanders that could attach to a standard drill.
Then we had to locate all the radiators, 5 in total. The last time we saw the other 4 they were in the backyard. We rooted through this mess for a bit before we released they were hiding inside. Sigh.
Then it was time to get to business. The is what we started with:
Here's Eric using the very course metal sander to remove the majority of the rust
That one got most of the rust off, but he used the smaller ones to get in some of the more hard to reach spots. The we finished them off with the hand held wire brushes
Notice the can in the bottom left corner of that picture. Proof that Eric and I are computer geeks...we used compressed air to get the dust and cobwebs out! It actually worked better than the shop-vac, believe it or not.
Then we spent a crazy amount of time priming the crap out of those damn radiators! What a pain...
For anyone who has actually read this far and is still remotely interested, we used Rustoleum's Rusty Metal Primer. When we do the finish coat we'll be using Rustoleum's Hammered Silver. When the renovations are done (whenever the hell that is) and I invite you over to see the place, I am going to make you stare and APPRECIATE how beautiful the radiators are. I'm not even joking.
Now we're just waiting on functioning heat. In the meantime we have some space heaters that work pretty well as long as you are within a 2-3 foot radius of it. The cats have been curled up in front of it for a few days straight now. Yes, it's that cold
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