Walls and Ceilings - Can we remove wood paneling and add drywall?

Our house was built in 1979 and the living room has wood paneling. The guy we bought it from (he bought it on foreclosure) painted the paneling white (which doesn't look TOO bad). Hubby though would rather have drywall. Can you take down wood paneling and add drywall? Or is drywall thicker? What kind of difficulty level is this project (say on 1 being easy and 10 hardest)? We are first time homeowners (not even moved in yet!!!) so I don't want us to immediately take on a project that will break our backs, time, money and whatever else. We have two small children (toddlers) too so it's not like we can easily just live around the stuff laying around for weeks on end until it's done, ya know? :eek:

Or... I've seen some suggestions of people filling in the splines of the paneling to make it all flush. Is that a wiser option? We wanted to paint the walls originally.

Oh, and lastly... What are the benefits of drywall (that we would have to add) vs. wood paneling (that already exists)?

Thanks so much!!! You guys/gals are the best! A true life saver!

The benefits to removal and replacing is that you have the opportunity to add insulation to the wall cavity which will affect sound transmission between adjacent rooms, as will the drywall.

Whether you elect to fill the seams of the paneling or apply the dyrwall, both will require sanding.

Another concern you'll need to address, is the door and window trim, which is fairly straight forward.

What did you mean by the other concern? That we'd have to take it off and such? Just wanted to make sure :) I DO get confused easily so who knows... :blah:

Where the paneling intersects with the door and window jambs, beneath the casing, and you won't know this until you remove a piece of the molding, the depth of the reveal. It could be 1/2" already and adjusted with the molding, or 1/8", the thickness of the paneling, Which would require the addition of filler strips.

Well it turned out that there is some sort of drywall already behind the panelling. It's only about 1/4"-1/2" thick. Is that about normal? I would probably have to add more drywall on top of the other just to make it flush with the rest of the ceiling/wall, huh? Our living room is an A shape from front to back, so part of the popcorn ceiling is the upper half of two of the walls... Does that make sense? LoL

And since there is already some drywall there, does that mean there is probably already some insulation?

Thanks!

I am doing that in my family room now; i hate those dark wood panels with the black indented vertical lines. thought of painting them but didnt like that idea.
I removed all the wood panels(wood studs behind them), wired for speakers, removed outlets/switches, moved outlets/switches, added outlets/switches, phone jack, added ceiling cans, removed a wall, added a wall, added insulation, trimmed bricks from fire place and ... finally almost ready to paint- almost !
took me a long time to do all that. but don't let me discourage you from tackling that monster, i was doing too many things at once - without good help(wife), ( although my 3 yr old did offer to help many times - :) )
my dilemma now is that the door jambs were originally installed per thickness of the panels and now I am installing drywall which is thicker than panels. have to work on solving that one. are you doin the taping yourself (you dont want to goof that one up or all your hard work will look cheap)
try your best to keep the little ones from breathing or walking through the dust. (it is a struggle keeping my 3 and 5 yr old away from mess)
best of luck.

Wow. Lots of work! LoL How long have you been working on all of that Handyhand? We decided that for the sake of moving in and making it a home asap, we painted over the wood paneling. It was already painted over with a white paint, so we just primed it with gray gripper primer, and then painted it a beautiful red/brown called Cinnabar by Behr. We just finished Monday night and our carpet should be all installed tomorrow. Hubby has definitly liked the finished product of the painted panels though. Not his first choice (definetly drywall) but the color and the "pin-stripes" from the paneling give it a certain character. Plus, the room is VERY large, and has a halfwall that look into the kitchen, a stone fireplace, three hallways, a back door, and a very large window (three windows together) looking in to the back yard. So, there is a lot of color, and a lot of light. Plus our carpet is a very light color with speckles in a frieze. Can't wait to see the finished product.

In about ten years, hopefully I'll run in to you on the forums again and you can give me a play by play of what to do! LoL

Hope you can sit down and relax soon!!!

Hi,
My new house has old panelling too (in the kitchen) and it's NOT painted, yet.
I may just go with striipping it/priming it and painting it white too... however, can you put up drywall OVER the panelling??? Or again, would you just be running into trouble at the door frames and such?
How bad did it look in white?
deb :)

we just removed almost all of the wood paneling from our living room, but it seems to be stuck behind the fire place, and we can't seem to take it off.. any recommendations on an easy way? What might cut it w/out harming the drywall behind?!

Hey Deb!

It actually didn't look that bad in white. White is a CLEAN color to me, and in a kitchen, I think it would definetly look nice. :) The only reason we painted over our white paneling (in the living room) is because I grew up in apartments my entire life and I need color now! LoL

You should be able to just prime the wood. I would use an electric sander and sand it to a finish that will let the primer grip it. Then prime, then paint. You can't exactly strip it if there is no paint yet. The wood is already wood, ya know?

As for adding drywall on top, that might be a bad idea. It would make the density of your wall too thick probably. If you want to go that route, I would remove all of the paneling, and then add drywall in the same thickness. We found out we actually have drywall behind our wood paneling. You might have the same thing yourself! Take off a piece of trim one day (if you have any) and look inside. You might be pleasantly surprised. ;)

PottersDaughter

We are almost at the end of our remodel of the first floor of our house. We had to add a bedroom and redo the bathroom by removing 3 feet and adding a shower/tub.
There was wood paneling in the family room that we removed. There was sheetrock under the paneling that we had to primer and fill the nail holes. The biggest part of removing the paneling was to remove the trim from around all the windows and doors before starting. Actually it only took me a half a day to remove it all with my two sons helping by taking everything out to the truck. Fixing the sheetrock took the rest of the day and then we painted the walls on Sunday. On Monday we replaced all the trim around the doors and windows.

It is my understanding that there should be sheetrock on every wall in your house (both exterior and interior walls). I have never seen anyone put wood paneling over the studs and I don’t think it is legal.