You could have them dipped in acid or sand or bead blasted, then painted and clear coated ... prep is everything. You might even want to look into powder coating, more durable than paint though. Just depends on how much you want to get into it.

You would be amazed at what you can do with a wire wheel and a can of spray paint though.

Mike

I considered blasting and re-painting the covers for my baseboards. Then I realized that new covers are not expensive and look very nice. You can buy a cover for a 5' heater for about $28 at Lowe's or HD. With a new heating element, they are only $5 more. For a larger room with 15-20' of heater, you can get several 8-10' covers and the splices to make the installation look clean.

As I remodel each room in my house, I am replacing all the old baseboards, including the elements, since they are all bashed up, dirty, and full of undescribable nastiness.

-Eastrick

:) on new baseboards, Eastrick is right- just recover them.

on my darling old, original to the house beasties? can't replace them- I painted two of them with plain old house paint, used a wire brush on a drill to clean up the radiators and sprayed them with rustoleum heat resistant...

and cleaned another one of the baseboards down to bare metal, gave it several coats of the copper coating they use for Verdigris work...and then added copper leaf over that base. like it so much, I'm thinking about doing them all that way.