Walls and Ceilings - Adding a drywall ceiling with existing wood panelling

I'm in the process of buying a house that was most recently redone in the 70s, so there is wood panelling everywhere.

Also all over the house is a cheap, nasty, dropped ceiling (the kind with a metal grid holding up foam panels). I want to rip every bit of that suspended ceiling down and replace it with drywall sheets.

I'm planning to resell the house within 4 years or so, so I'm willing to spend money if it'll add equity to the property. At the same time, I'm not flush with cash nor do I have a lot of time on my hands, so I have to plan what I'm doing carefully.

Problem: Best practices indicate that a ceiling should be installed first, then the drywall sheets for the walls should be butted up under the ceiling sheets to help hold them up. Because I don't know whether there is drywall under the wood panelling or not, I'm faced with two possibilities:

1) I want to install a drywall ceiling into a room with ONLY wood panelling on the walls.

2) I want to install a drywall ceiling into a room in which the drywall walls (covered by wood panelling) are already there.


My question is whether there is any way to do a quality job on the ceilings while leaving the walls as they are, or whether I'll have to rip out whatever is there currently and redo both the ceiling and walls with new drywall.

Alternatively, are there other methods I could use to get rid of the ugly suspended ceiling, with a minimum of effort or expense?

Thanks!

The best course of action, since the panelling will be predominant, is to install the ceiling, and install crown molding to hide the crack you won't be able to use drywall compound on. You don't have to go with an opulent 3 or 4 inch crown. You can install a wm61 which only measures 9/16 x 1 5/8 in stain grade (wm60 is finger jointed for paint grade). You will know if there is sheetrock under your panelling, as the panelling will give quite a bit between studs if it is not backed. Ideally, yes you would install the ceiling first, but you are in a crack, and if you can use the crown, you will be better off.
Taking down the grid.....well, pop out all the panels, and cut all the suspended wires with wire cutters and stand back. Gravity will help out tremendously.

I would add that that because you have a suspended ceiling that means the wall are taller than they appear. Lift a panel up and look to see if your paneling goes all the way to the ceiling or not.

Thanks for the replies!

Chandler, how do I support the ceiling drywall sufficiently around the edges? Is that what the crown moulding is for? Also, I'm concerned about the equity: I'm hoping to sell between $500,000 and $700,000, and I want to be sure that the improvements I make are high quality enough for that price range. Do you think adding the ceiling and using crown moulding to cover up the seams is acceptable, or would that be considered a hack job?

Marksr, thanks for the suggestion. I haven't actually looked at the edges above the suspended ceiling, but in the rooms that I'm planning all this, the tiles are only about 4 inches lower than the actual ceiling. The serious distance is in the kitchen whereI have a totally different plan altogether.

The drywall ceiling should be supported by the screws/nails that attach it to the rafters [or floor joists if there's rooms above]

Crown mould is a good way to hide the transistion from paneling to drywall. It is most commonly used to make a room look more elegant. Most high end homes have crown moulding.

Agreed. I would install the sheetrock on the joisting above. Now, the 3" or so you have above the drop ceiling will be unfinished wall, either not painted, or not stained, so you may have to install the 4 1/4" crown. It will fall down further on the wall and will hide the line where your drop ceiling was. As Marksr suggests, since it is a higher end home, the use of the larger molding is in order.

If larger crown is to big or hard to work with you can install multiple piece crown moulding. Often a piece of base will be installed [upside down] near the ceiling and then the crown is nailed to it and the ceiling. There are various ways to make crown look bigger and more elegant.