The waiting is over, my friends! The project that began on a snow day was finished on a snow day.

We’ll get to the reveal but first, a little inspiration.

My friend Thalla was poking around a bookstore and stumbled on a book that she knew I’d love.

Restoring a House in the City by Ingrid Abramovitch was immediately purchased from Amazon.com and poured over the day it arrived. It was that day I saw these pictures:

What popped out at me were the bright red glossy radiators.

I’d been struggling with how to paint our bedroom radiators. They looked like this:

Yick. Obviously they were white at some point but desperately needed to be repainted. White? Cream to blend with the curtains? BM’s Quiet Moments to blend with the wall color? Silver?

NOPE!!

Pumpkin Orange.

And a quick shout-out to Frank! When I gave hints about our secret project, Frank guessed that we were putting orange covers on our steam radiators. You were SO close. Great guess!

The process for painting the radiator was simple but very time consuming. First, it needed a really good wire brushing.

Rob ended up using several different sized wire brushes. The big one on top & a more medium-sized one for the outer parts and the little narrow ones you see at the bottom of the frame for getting in between the sections.

After the paint was scraped off, we vacuumed and wiped it down with wet rag. When it was all clean, we started painting.

One section at a time. Back & front. Front & back. Front and front again. It took 4 coats of Glidden’s Pumpkin Patch in high gloss enamel. This Old House says you should use oil based paint for painting radiators but a book we own called “We Got Steam Heat!” {highly recommended, btw} says latex or oil based is fine {p. 112}. The temperature of the radiator won’t go about 220 degrees F and that’s well below regular paint’s melting or igniting point.

I never thought we’d be finished with it. Each coat (front AND back) took 4 hours. FOUR HOURS. {I may have only done the back twice, so don’t look too close at the back.}

And yes I took the painting to the store with me so that I could find the orange that best coordinated. It is the accent color in our bedroom, after all.

And there you have it!

Not 24 hours after seeing those pictures, a decision was made and the first coat of orange hit the metal. I guess when something feels right, it’s pretty easy to pull the trigger.

So are we crazy for painting our radiator orange? Or does it a wonderfully fun pop of color? Have you painted anything recently a wild or unexpected color?