How To Reuse Cast Iron Register Covers

"Man's own breath is his greatest enemy," proclaimed engineer and self-styled health skillful Lewis Westward. Leeds in his landmark 1866 book, Lectures on Ventilation. Information technology sounds kooky, merely his alarmist prescript, coupled with the tools of the Industrial Revolution, helped spawn of import 19th-century innovations in home heating and ventilation. "Victorian-era Americans idea that exhaled air caused sickness," says historian Dan Holohan. "So those who could beget it heated their homes with a constant supply of warmed, fresh air." Air was drawn in from the outdoors through ducts into basement boilers or furnaces, where it was heated, then carried through more ducts into rooms through fanciful estrus registers mounted in walls and floors.

Like radiators of the era, these molded cast-atomic number 26, bronze, or brass grates were part of a new invention and were therefore designed with architectural flourishes like scrollwork and floral or geometric patterns in their filigree. "The average Victorian domicile had only fireplaces for warmth, and and then of a sudden yous have this central heat, and that'southward something yous actually wanted to evidence off," says Holohan.

One-time registers had louvers attached to the dorsum to control airflow. These worked like window shutters, opening and closing with a lever or wheel on the front. Grates without louvers are chosen grilles. These also delivered warmed air, but the louvers to control flow were located inside the ductwork. In dwelling house heating systems that relied on recirculated air, every bit opposed to air drawn solely from outside, grilles were used as returns, sucking—with gravity's aid—cooled inside air back into the boiler or furnace for reheating.

Effectually the turn of the 20th century, manufacturers sold both registers and grilles in a large variety of sizes, decorative patterns, and finishes, including "japanned" lacquer, porcelain enamel, nickel, even gold plate. Among a collection of original catalogs that Rejuvenation, a Portland, Oregon, hardware and lighting company, uses to inspire its new designs is an 1882 issue from Tuttle & Bailey of New York City. "They were the Gustav Stickley of registers," says Bo Sullivan, the senior designer and historian at Rejuvenation.

Molded registers and grilles were popular throughout the Art Deco catamenia of the 1920s and '30s, but by the end of World War II, their designs were simpler and the materials and methods for making them inferior. "Materials shortages led to a break from tradition, and factories were now stamping patently, bent-fin registers out of sheet metal," says Sullivan. Air-conditioning and electric baseboard heating in mid-century split-level and ranch-style houses also contributed to their decline.

<p>Filigreed florals and geometrics are common in old grilles.</p> — Filigreed florals and geometrics are mutual in old grilles.

If y'all have a modern forced-air organization, you can still take advantage of vintage grilles' and registers' good looks and sturdy craftsmanship. But make certain they are the correct size for the duct openings. Nearly salve yards have a broad selection of period originals priced betwixt $20 and $350, depending on size, blueprint, metal type, and shape. Rectangular and foursquare registers are mutual, while those shaped like horseshoes and circles are harder to come past. Nigh are made of cast atomic number 26.

The bulk of the old registers and grilles that Stan "The Junk Man" Zaborski of Zaborski Emporium in Kingston, New York, sells are destined for reuse in new houses. "People want something better than that flimsy crap they make them out of today," says Zaborski. The claiming is finding enough matching old ones to outfit an entire business firm. And considering most are covered in lead paint, there's also the expense of having them professionally sandblasted and refinished. "But it's worth the hassle," says Zaborski, noting the fashion of 40 matching bronze grilles that he recently rescued from a remodeled hotel in New York City.

Among the more decorative applications for a single salvaged grille is to add an airy centerpiece to a manifestly wooden table past cutting a hole in the height and inserting the metalwork. You could as well adhere onetime wooden porch brackets to the sides of a grille to make a wall-mounted shelf, or backlight ane to turn it into a sconce (encounter how at left).

Not that our 19th-century engineer Lewis Leeds had any of these artistic reuses in mind when he was scaring people with all that talk virtually poisonous actual gases. Only we do have him to thank for inspiring the heating advances that left united states of america these architectural relics that remain so versatile today.

Plough a Grille Into a Light Fixture

When about every horizontal surface in my living room was occupied by a scented candle—a holdover from my Deadhead days on Shakedown Street—I knew it was time to rectify the mood-lighting situation. And so I put my monthly $xl candle resource allotment—it really is a sickness—toward the corded light socket, low-heat compact fluorescent seedling, and other parts required to turn an erstwhile cast-iron grille into a wall sconce.

Here's how:

Gum and nail together a wood frame that'due south sized to the grille.
Use a 1/4-inch bit to drill a hole in the frame's bottom, and snake the string through (unscrew the socket to disconnect the wires).
Seat the socket in the frame, using a paddle bit to widen the inner side of the hole.
Cutting a piece of lampshade fabric (find it at lampshop.com), and fit it between the frame and grille to hide the seedling and diffuse the light.
Using its existing screw holes, secure the grille to the frame with wood screws.
To hang the sconce, utilize a salvaged cabinet hinge, or nail D-ring picture hangers to the dorsum of the frame.