This won’t give your walls an even finished look, but sometimes you just have to work with what you got. The strips are underneath the sheets of paneling and taking them out means ripping up the paneling which usually leads to damage and the paneling breaking. If you can’t remove them you’ll have to deal with them and paint over them.
If you have any divider strips between the paneling you’ll want to remove them if you can. Clear it out as much as possible so you can get to all the wall space. For us this meant removing everything from cabinets to appliances because we were giving it a total makeover. Here are the step by step instructions on what my husband and I did to make our kitchen look more like an Italian country kitchen than a 1970s nightmare.įirst we cleaned out the room. I finally figured out a way to make it work. I did some research and spent a lot of time at the local Home Depot looking at products and scanning through books. I knew just painting over the paneling would not look good as all of the seams would still show. Since then I’ve learned that this technique can be used to hide uneven drywall, cement walls, cover old paneling and even wallpaper. I couldn’t believe how fabulous my walls looked when I was finished. Texture painting and faux finishes can help cover and transform not so perfect walls. I decided on texture painting with a faux finish.
#Cover wall paneling update#
What could I do to update the walls without spending a fortune? It was hideous.īut when it was time to remodel we didn’t have the time or budget to tear it out and drywall everything. The paneling was ugly, uneven in some areas and completely outdated. Ugly brown and yellow floral paneling in the dining area. Instead of trying to pretend your wood panels don’t exist and never have, why not embrace them? Paint them a different color that’s hard to ignore.My kitchen used to be a 1970s nightmare. “Curtains hung ceiling to floor can also mask a wall of paneling and soften up the room in the process.” 7.
“Install built-in bookshelves over the paneling, to disguise it,” Feaster suggests. No one will pay attention if there’s something constructed in front of your panel wall, right? Photo by W I N B E R G Interior + Architectural design 6. Hide the wood paneling with shelves or curtains “A gallery wall, with art hung salon-style or the addition of large mirrors and sculptures, can all distract from a paneled wall of planks,” says Felicia Feaster, managing editor of Scripps Lifestyle Studios & HGTV. Just as a good magician pretends to saw his assistant in half, so she can make a secret getaway through a trap door, you, too, can draw attention away from your paneling. 3. Turn the wood panels into regular walls “Start by watering down your paint, then brush on the wood, immediately wipe, and repeat until you get your desired color that works with your decor and furniture,” Heinemann says. A technique called “whitewashing” (not to be confused with old-fashioned whitewashing with lime) allows you to keep that in your room, while losing the ski lodge-fallen-on-hard-times motif. There’s no shame if you secretly dig the wood grain texture of your walls and want to keep this weathered focal point.
“It brightens a room and gives it a rustic, cottagelike decor,” Heinemann says. Start with a good primer to cover all that panel and wood grain, then add a few coats of a vivid white paint.
One of the easiest, quickest wood paneling makeover ideas? “A fresh coat of white paint,” says Bee Heinemann, an interior design expert and marketing director of Vänt Wall Panels.