How to Cover Wood Paneling

I thought that I would post a quick "how to" on hiding wood paneling. In my house, the wood paneling was on both the walls and ceiling. The addition was built at a time when this particular style was popular and the paneling took the place of plaster. Now I realize that some people really like this look, but I was not so fond of it. After much consideration, I decided that I would skim coat the paneling with joint compound and then hang a textured, paintable wallpaper on top.

Here are the steps that we took when covering our paneling. This worked for us, but modifications could make it even better.

Step one: Give your paneling a good sanding, especially if it was stained at some point. If it was painted as ours was, a quick sanding and then a wipe down with tack cloth will help the joint compound stick.

Step two: Cover the paneling with joint compound. We use the quick setting joint compound as it is structurally stronger and actually goes through a chemical reaction as it sets unlike the premixed types which merely dry. It is a pain to have to keep mixing it, however.

Step three: Sand down the joint compound. By far, this is the worst step. Be sure to wear a dust mask and tape off other connected rooms. This step is messy, hot, and allows you to breathe your own exhaust for an extended period of time. Splendid! I would never want to work as a drywall installer.

Step four: Paint the joint compound with drywall primer. Do not saturate the joint compound as it will try to come off. Several coats may be necessary, but make sure that it dries completely between coats.

Step five: This is something that we did not do, but would do in the future. Paint the room with a latex paint. We didn't do this, and when we hung the wallpaper, the joint compound would sometimes try to come off. It seems like a coat or two of latex paint would probably tack down that joint compound a little better.

Step six: Hang your wallpaper as you would normally hang wallpaper. Be careful when rolling the seams, as pushing out the paste could mean pealing wallpaper later.

Step seven: Take care of any peeling or loose seams. We used paintable caulk around baseboards and trim, and along edges to secure the wallpaper further.

Step eight: Paint the wallpaper. We encountered some bubbles as the wallpaper became saturated again. These disappeared as the wallpaper dried, but we were worried for a while.

Step nine: Enjoy your room. As with any wallpaper, keep some paste handy in case humidity changes cause your wallpaper to peel some. Since we live in Colorado, our problem is the lack of humidity, which creates formidable plaster and joint compound cracks.

The before and after pictures are in the post prior to this. This picture shows the "after" detail. You would never know there is deep, wood paneling behind this paper.

Another Hiatus

This time, the hiatus was from the blog...

We have been very busy since November. My parents came up and helped to install all new windows and doors. They still need to be trimmed and painted, but it is so nice to have windows that actually open! In May we tore up the backyard and put in four 8' x 4' raised gardens. We will have enough squash and zucchini to sell at the market. We also moved a crab apple tree that was under the power lines in the backyard into the front yard. I won't post pictures of all this work in this post, but I will get myself organized and enter them in next time.

However, my favorite recent project was fixing up the back bedroom as a craft room/studio. As many of you may remember, the back of the house was an addition that was made entirely of solid wood paneling. Walls and ceiling! Since the ceiling was so short (seven feet!), it felt like I was living in a motor home with siding. My brilliant idea was to skim coat the siding and then cover it with a textured, paintable, wallpaper. My mother is a whiz at hanging wallpaper, so she came up and helped me.

Zip ahead to current time, and I am without a job. However, that has given me time to think about where I am going and what I need to do to get there. I realized that I purchased this house because I wanted to have a room that I could make into my studio. For the last three years, I have put my art on hold (save for knitting, since it takes almost no room) and I have been a little depressed as a result. So Saturday, I came into the computer room and told Brice that I wanted to finish the craft room. This was contrary to everything that I had been saying the last few weeks, which was that I wanted to complete all the little things that we have left undone before starting something new. That day, we finished hanging the wallpaper. Sunday we hung up the trim. Tuesday I primed and painted the trim. Finally, on Wednesday we painted the room...macaroni and cheese orange!

Here are some "before" pictures of the room...

You can see the old window in this picture, which was an aluminum storm window. These rooms in the back addition had their "real" windows removed at some point and there was an enormous amount of heat loss in the winter time.



In the next picture, notice that there are two light switches. One was for the porch light, but we moved it into the room with the back door. It was difficult trying to figure out what all the switches were for in this part of the house. You will also notice the plug in the closet. Although not visible in this picture, there was also a phone and cable outlet in there as well. The last owners did not have a closet door, but we will be ordering one soon. While everyone wishes they had a plug in the closet, we moved it.



Now to paint it orange...or juicy cantaloupe to be exact. Orange is said to be a creative color and just so happens to be my favorite. Being native Coloradans, the orange with the blue painter's tape reminded us of Bronco colors. But once it was removed, things looked much better.







In this picture, you can see the new vinyl Pella window that we got at Lowes. More on that later...



Definitely reminded us of macaroni and cheese or maybe even a creamsicle.

The 'Rents Visit - Part Two

My father virtually completed the shower by himself, while the rest of us (Brice, Melanie - Brice's sister, my mother, and myself) devoted our time to getting the back addition ready to wallpaper. Many will remember that the back addition was covered wall to ceiling in paneling (Laundry Room Paneling). The only exceptions was were new walls had been added and were made out of drywall. When I bought the house I decided that I didn't like the paneling and would take it out. It wasn't until later that I discovered that the paneling was actually solid wood, tongue and groove, paneling, that was substituted for plaster or drywall. The walls were made out of paneling. And to make it worse, new walls were built over the existing paneling. To take it out and put up wallboard would require very intense labor and a small chunk of change. I really couldn't live with paneling placed horizontally on the floor and ceiling. After a lot of research on the internet, I discovered that there is a whole host of people that would like to get rid of their paneling from the seventies, but for various reasons, they do not want to actually remove it from the wall. Most wanted to paint their paneling, but first needed to fill it in.

I decided that we would fill in the paneling and then paint it. However, my paneling was not seamless, and I was afraid that the joint compound would crack. So after more deliberation, I decided that the best way to hide the paneling was with paintable, textured wallpaper. We would first need to fill in the paneling so that the wallpaper would have something to stick to. I tested several compounds. Wood filler worked great. Ideally wood filler is meant to bond to wood, does not shrink, and would most likely not crack if the wall flexes. However, wood filler is messy and VERY expensive if you wanted to fill in two rooms with paneling. The second compound was spackle. Spackle also work well, but it was messy and still pretty expensive to use for this application. The final compound was joint compound. Although it probably has the highest potential to crack, it is the most affordable and easiest to apply. We made sure to use the powdered kind, since it has a chemical reaction making it bond better and shrink less. We didn't need perfection, but we did need a smooth surface for hanging wallpaper.

After the joint compound was applied and sanded (about two days), we sealed it with primer made for new drywall. Although this primer was made for new drywall, if you coat it too thick, it could successfully remove the joint compound that you had put up. So we applied two coats. It dries very quickly, but has a very strong smell. I have read that ideally you should let the joint compound cure for about a week before applying the primer, but we were in a hurry to use my parents expertise and I am not sure that would make a difference, since wetting joint compound will certainly remove it.



The final day, we started to wallpaper. I begged my parents to start on the ceiling, since I knew I would need the most help with this. We snapped a chalk line on the ceiling so that we could make the lines as straight as possible. This was no easy feat, since nothing in the house is straight and you can't use the walls or ceiling as a reference point. We applied a thin layer of wallpaper paste, even though the wallpaper was pre-pasted. The wallpaper paste has to be brushed on thinly, since it tried to take off the primer layer. While that was drying, we cut the wallpaper to about an inch longer than the required length, wet it, and "booked" it. With three people, we put the wallpaper on the ceiling, smoothed out any air bubbles and held out breath to see if it would stay.

Here are the final results for the small bedroom's ceiling. We weren't able to finish all the walls yet, but so far, everything looks real good. Once it is painted, it will hopefully look a lot like textured drywall.