How To Strip Old Cast Iron Heat Register Vents
How to refinish dirty or antique cast iron vent grate grill covers and so you don't have to pay to replace them! The process is piece of cake and the tools required are minimal. The bulk of the refinishing is having the patience to exist circumspect to detail!
Refinishing and giving new life to your dingy, rusty, banged up vent covers is like shooting fish in a barrel to do! A glaze of enamel pigment can go a long way. If the vent grate covers are in need of more repair, then this tutorial is for you!
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Out 1886 Victorian home was loaded with gorgeous, jaw dropping ornate vent grates. I very specifically think being SO excited to have a dwelling with such character!…it but took until business firm #4 to become the graphic symbol I had always dreamed of!
As luck would have it, three months later on the firm was struck past lightning and defenseless fire. During the reconstruction, a 2d HVAC unit was added. The goal was to improve efficiency by splitting the area that each unit of measurement had to heat and cool. The "old" unit {unit prior to burn down} was left to heat and absurd the 1st floor and basement. The new unit was added to heat and absurd the 2nd flooring and third floor attic {which is at present insulated every bit apart of the house as opposed to it's own space as earlier}. And so in other words, we now accept 2 AC units that sit down exterior, and ii furnaces that are inside the house – 1 in the basement, one in the attic.
Still, in the process of eliminating the HVAC runs on the second floor, many of the vent holes were left – ? ? Always having fun at this house!
The vent in our master bath was a unlike style than the other vents, nevertheless, information technology still was old and super cute!
During the rebuild, the only thing replaced in here was the ceiling. Everything else stayed the aforementioned. The vent comprehend was removed and stored for 21 months until today! Afterwards having an open hole all of this time, I finally had had enough and put it back into the house simply fully refinished because it suffered a lot of abuse while out of the house…well, in reality, they all did!
We brought the vent grates back to our firm from a storage unit, they were yet filled with insulation debris from the demo phase of our rebuild. Haha! No one will ever be able to say we didn't "actually really" put every ounce of effort back into this house! I completely washed them with a hose, lather and scrub castor.
At that place were so many colors of pigment on some of the vents – the ones that came out of the kid's rooms. Using a special editing characteristic, I pulled all of the colors plant on the one! I mean, in normal circumstances I would be similar "uhhh". But with this business firm, I'm like all lovey dovey, how absurd is that? Lol!
Equally much fun every bit all of the colors were, my almost favorite was the gold!!!! I'm definitely a gold lover though and am incorporating it dorsum into this firm….like fifty-fifty when gold was super unpopular, I still loved it. Despite loving the gilded, I chose to go along or make everything flat black…for at present!
Moving along from the fun colors 🙂 Let'southward become down to the refinishing role!
How To Remove Pigment
For these antique vent grates, I completely stripped them of all of the paint by sanding with my mitt sander and scrubbing at them with a wire brush.
Side note most this mitt sander – we take endemic a couple of different brands throughout our DIY years of renovating homes. This i is by far my favorite. It does not hurt your hand or exit your mitt feeling like information technology's all the same shaking after you cease. It'south a tad scrap on the larger side (simply I have very small hands…my 12 twelvemonth former has bigger hands than me) – simply the like shooting fish in a barrel of using information technology and the comfortability is fantastic!
Paint Stripper to Remove Paint
The alternative would have been to use a paint stripper, notwithstanding, I'm non ever the biggest fan of paint stripper. It's very stinky, very messy and still requires sanding, wire brushing and/or scrapping to fully remove the pigment. In my personal opinion, paint stripper bubbles and creates more of a mess than I like to bargain with. When I stripped the woodwork in one of our bedrooms earlier the business firm fire, I painstakingly made my fashion through the layers and layers of paint, while half-way pulling my hair out. The paint stripper was not fun, although it was easy. Sanding the woods or using a heat gun was a way amend option.
Heat Gun to Remove Paint
Afterward removing 100s of years of paint from diverse items, using a heat gun is really the best and easiest method aside from just straight out sanding. It's easy and normally pretty quick. Nevertheless, there are some downfalls. Depending on the type of paint y'all are dealing with, y'all volition need to wear proper masking to avert inhaling the fumes caused by the "melting" paint. When I heat gunned the woodwork, I masked up with this heavy duty mask.
*Condom Side Note: I should accept worn my respirator mask while sanding to avoid inhaling whatever paint dust. Don't be like me.
How To Paint
When painting over fe, metal, etc, you want to apply a very durable, loftier quality paint. In addition, y'all don't want a paint that volition cleft or bear witness signs of expanding/contracting when the temperature of the item it is covering changes from hot to common cold. After examining many different pigment cans at my local Walmart, I establish this production by Rust-Oleum that was a high operation enamel. I knew this was exactly what I needed.
I personally chose to buy information technology in a apartment terminate, as I did non want shiny grates. The color options were limited in this line, nevertheless, that was not an issue for me equally I wanted black. I am happy to report that this pigment has held up amazing. In our chief bedroom, the vent grate is recessed in the floor, right in the middle of our doorway, then it gets stepped on daily. There are no scratches or scuffs.
Supplies Required:
- Mold and Atomic number 82 Paint Removal Respirator
- Dewalt hand sander
- Rust-Oleum Loftier Performance Enamel
- Wire brush
Video Tutorial
Before & After
Hither is the bath that I showed you at the get-go! While the white was cute, the black pops more and highlights the tile flooring.
Here is the master bedroom doorway grate that I as well mentioned. The wood flooring was a very light color when nosotros bought the house and nosotros immediately had the entire firm {the 1st and 2nd floors are all hardwood floors} refinished and re-stained to our favorite, timeless color, Early American earlier moving in….and and so once again after the burn down. The HVAC runs for the 2d floor were {supposed to be} eliminated with new runs coming from the new furnace in the attic – they were, however, this particular run was not close off and wiring was run through it – ohhh the joys. My hubby apace solved that issue and properly closed information technology off. The vent grate now is just for show (and actually the joists from the 1st story are now too big {tall} for the vent to sit in the pigsty like information technology used to – hence why the damper has been removed). We plan to install a sparse piece of forest, paint it to the same color equally the vent grate, and install it before the vent cover so it doesn't expect like this in the long term. We will too demand to add some shims to level it out and then the "frame" doesn't break in any more places from information technology no longer existence level. But…one project at a time!
**Note: y'all may be asking why not remove the grate and patch it in with more than wood floor? The short answer: 1. loss of character. The longer answer: 2. more flooring would need to exist removed in lodge to properly patch in {tooth} in the floor three. the wood flooring in this room is not the traditional two.25″ wide in size, information technology's much thinner and would crave even more work to track it downward…and wouldn't match exactly equally this floor is very very erstwhile! Not that it could't be done, considering we actually did this when we had the floors refinished the starting time time…but, get back to answer #1. 🙂 So, the vent grate stays!
I hope that this has inspired and given you lot the knowledge you need to refinish the vent grate covers in your own home. Be certain to bring together our e-mail list of thousands of other DIYers who are also looking to repair and update their homes on their ain!
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How To Strip Old Cast Iron Heat Register Vents,
Source: https://gatheredinthekitchen.com/how-to-paint-refinish-hvac-vent-grate-covers/
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