Flaking paint on Radiators

By radiators do you mean the big cast iron radiators common in older houses or hot water baseboard heating?

In either case they are metal and the paint flakes because they expand and contract as they heat and cool and after a while the older layers of paint lose their elasticity and become brittle. The next thing ya know your cleaning up little flakes of paint off the floor.

With the cast iron radiators you can use a power drill with a wire brush to get the exposed areas. The ideal thing to do would be to remove them and have them sandblasted but that's a lot of labor and expense.

With baseboard you can remove the covers and use a standard paint remover and/or a sander.

It's really sad that this is my source of knowledge on this area, but on Trading Spaces once, they tried to paint radiators and had your same problem. . . the solution they came up with was that the thinner you paint it, the less likely that is to be a problem, so they used spray paint and just prayed for the best, I guess.

The other thing I've seen them do is build boxes out of MDF (plywood) and paint those instead. . . makes a nice plant stand as well. . . (these would be the cast iron radiators fishin was talking about).

Fishin', are you saying that if you sandblast away enough of the paint, you could put a new thin layer on the bottom which would hold? (I actually have a radiator I'd love to, well, kill, but painting would be nice as well. . .)

The sandblast would remove the old paint and prep the surface for the new. It is a prep step, not the final finish.

My brother in law re-did his radiators (the big cast iron type) by taking them out, had them sandblasted and then he painted them with a high-temp spray paint that was intended for car engines. Sandblasting will remove EVERYTHING. All the old paint and any rust is gone. Nothing but bare metal is left.

you can paint anything with that engine spray paint. . . I think I may give it a try, thanks :-)

Paint on radiators and on metal hinges
I have paint flaking on both hot water baseboard and cast iron upright radiators - however the baseboards are also cast iron so I don't think it's going to be a simple "remove the cover" type of situation. I've been wire brushing the radiators but it's a slow process. I will try that engine spray paint when I get back in my house; am having my floors refinished right now. It probably would have been better to do the radiators before but a bunch of things happened (needed a place to stay, catsitting at my daughter's while she's away) so I the floors are being done now.

Anyone know of a quick way to remove paint from door hinges and hardware? It seems I have paint where I don't want it and no paint where I do want it.