BYE BYE WOOD PANELING

If you read my last blog, you know that I am renovating my mom’s house and in this house, there is wall after wall of wood paneling. My sister and I both offered numerous times to paint it or do something different to the awful paneling but mom shut us down half way through our sales pitch every single time! NOT ANYMORE!!!! My house! My rules! And my number one rule is NO MORE WOOD PANELING!!!

We started on the dining room first. So here are some before pictures for you to fully understand (what I believe to be) the pure ugly of wood paneling.

Just as a reminder, here is the layout of the house

So after seeing the blueprint again and the pictures you can kinda see that the dining room and the living room are one, big, open space and there is wood paneling everywhere! It’s even in the kitchen! Just not as much (Thank you Jesus)! But not for long!

Thanks to my long time friends and neighbors that are just up the hill, they showed us a technique to hide the paneling and make it look like one seamless wall! You need Joint Compound, Joint Tape, screws, a drill, scrapers, and a ton of patience!

FIRST STEP

Screw in any loose panels you have. Make sure that if you press on the paneling it doesn’t move. If it does move or give at all, drill in some screws. Because once you put the putty on the paneling, if it moves, the layer of texture will crack and you’ll have to do exactly what I told you to do in the first place. So make sure everything is solid and not lose at all. *HINT – the middle of the paneling is hard to drill through, so drill through on the fake seems. *

SECOND STEP

Joint tape! You will need it and it will end up saving you a lot of time rather than puttying the walls twice. This wood paneling has been here for a while and with the house moving and adjusting over the years some of the seams are pretty large between the panels. So make sure to get joint tape and tape the seams so that you can go over one flat surface and not have to worry about the seams showing through. You may also want to use this on the fake seems of the wood paneling to save some time on double coating the putty.

THIRD STEP

Sheetrock Putty. I needed a lot of this to do both rooms. We also have very tall ceilings, so I had to use more than a typical ceiling height would ( I used two 5 gallon tubs). All you do is make sure the mixture in the tub is mixed well and get a scrapper/spreader such as above and smear it on the wall. You want a texture on the wall so don’t worry about it being perfect. Put a glob of putty on the scraper/spreader and smear an even coat.

STEP FOUR

Let it dry over night until all of the gray looking putty turns white and then you are ready to paint!!! Now as you can see I still have more texturing to do but I will show you pics of what I have done already.

Little by little we are making progress and huge messes on the way! One good thing about the putty is that it will come off with water if you do get it on you. I will post more pictures when I get more of the walls done. We are also in the middle of a bathroom remodel that I think you will like to check out when it’s done. Going to be a lot different but in a great way!!

Thank you for reading!