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Difficulty: Easy to moderate
You need to be able to measure, saw, screw, and paint with the skill of a patient novice
Fresh off the factory floor, with ornate cast-iron fins ready to take their first hit of steam, the radiator was the darling of American plumbing. But that was a long time ago, and 90 winters and 10 paint coats haven’t treated the old girl well. Even if you could clean up the cobwebs and grind off the flaky lead-based layers, a cast-iron hunk crouching over a warped floor still doesn’t look pretty.
Better just cut your losses and cover it up. As This Old House technical editor Mark Powers demonstrates on the following pages, with a little weekend carpentry and about thirty bucks’ worth of MDF and molding, you could customize a cabinet to hide the radiator and reclaim some wasted space. Add a fresh coat of paint and a gleaming metal screen, and the venerable radiator, a living legend, will once again look as hot as it feels.
