We are rocking along on the house. I’m down to the last big room to be painted and that is the den. Yowza, at the brown wood paneling in that space. I have never been a fan of wood paneling and vowed if I ever inherited a house that had it, it would be painted in no time flat. That time has come and I tackled it last week. This paneling is actually made of real wood (thin for sure), but I don’t have a problem covering it up. Bye-bye 1970’s!
If you have wood-paneled walls and want a lighter look, don’t hesitate to paint them!
Use drop cloths to keep paint off your floors. A thicker roller helps get paint into the panel grooves. I used an oil based primer on my paneling. It will definitely not chip off with this primer, but you can also use shellac as well. Open windows to keep the fumes down. Use rubber gloves to keep paint off your hands.If you want to be extra careful, use painter’s tape to mask off trim and baseboards. Keep a damp cloth handy to wipe up any spills.
In its brown glory, the befores. I’m still debating on what to do with that ceiling. It’s a drop ceiling, not my fave, but underneath is ugly ductwork and pipes and so I can’t just take down the ceiling. I’m sure those tiles are original, cause they are very saggy and stained and even the vents are duct-taped in the top, which will have to go.
I’ve painted over some of the stains to make them less noticeable, but eventually I’d like to just replace them all with fresh new tiles. That seems to be my best bet on this one, but I will probably live with them for awhile and then change them out. I haven’t even priced them out, so I need to take one down and haul it with me to Lowes to see what they have that will fit this grid.
UPDATE: I may have found a great solution, just need some $$ to do it. Saw this website, Ceilume, on another blog (Dixie Delights) that I featured in one of my Feature Fridays and they used a drop ceiling in their basement. They have a nice selection of 2×4′ tiles which is the size I need and look at these:
This is one of their best sellers (and most economical) and these break it up into 12×12 squares which would pop right into my ceiling. Love this look and that could completely update my ceiling. All I need is about $600 to replace with these. This will definitely be on my list of things to do!
So, back to the walls. I know painting the paneling will lighten this space up so much and I’ve been dying to get it all primed and painted. That door sitting on the floor will get painted black and it will replace the open door there going up the stairs. That one has a hole in it and the door on the floor came from closing up the door going into the kitchen from the living room. Got that change-out?
Once again, Zinsser cover stain oil base primer came to the rescue (big thanks to the Rust-Oleum folks for sending me so much primer for my project). I’m currently on gallon 6 of primer, this house needed a ton of white to cover up the ugly. It’s an oil based primer and will work great for covering this paneling and preparing it for latex paint. I rolled it on with a thick roller and a paintbrush for the cutting in. The thicker roller helped get into those grooves. Be sure to wipe down your paneling before starting to paint.
I don’t think there’s a need to use grit sandpaper before painting, since using a good stain-blocking primer takes care of that.
It takes some muscle to move the roller around and get it all into the grooves, but for the most part that roller worked great.
All primed and ready for the real paint color, which is Comfort Gray by Sherwin Williams.
From the stairs and door looking down the room. All primed, yay! I’d love to add another window to this room eventually on the left wall. A nice big double window would be nice, since this room is not below ground, it’s level with the ground and another window could easily be cut into the wall. On my list!
After two coats of Comfort Gray, we have a room really starting to look like a room I could live in.It’s amazing what a new coat of paint can do for a room!
I love this soft blue/gray and it will look great with my existing den furniture. I wanted this space to be light and airy too and this color should do the trick, especially after I change out the overhead light fixtures.
I am not sure what I’ll put up there, but something besides what is there now. Those are UGLY! You can see I’ve already got two coats of my Dark Brown door paint on there too. It’s so hard to photograph carpet that is beige. This carpet is not pink-toned at all, but comes across in these pics that way. It’s a nice medium beigy tone.
The door to the left of the stairs goes down to the garage.
Other side with Comfort Gray. Looking good! So, this room is coming along. I still have all the white trim to paint, but I’m getting there.
If you have old-style 70’s paneling, by all means paint that stuff! It is not precious wood at all, so talk your husband into it and you won’t be sorry. Men sometimes have a really hard time painting wood, but this is just a wood facsimile and deserves to be painted. Go for it!
If you have REAL wood paneling, that’s a different story, so you’ll have to duke it out with the man at your house. You know what I’m enjoying so much on this renovation? I don’t have to argue with a man over what I want to do. Yeah, that’s awesome! 🙂
Moving upstairs to the front door, I got out my black paint and got one coat on the inside of the front door. It’s already black on the outside and now will stand out from the inside too.
There is not a really easy way to paint a metal door, but I used the foam roller on the flat parts and brush in the grooves. Hopefully, the 2nd coat will smooth things out. I did tape up the doorknobs and inside the glass with FrogTape.
And it’s looking better already. We still have to rip out the old wood down there and repair plywood that is rotted inside the door. The reason I haven’t painted the trim yet is because it’s all wonky and weird and has to be worked on. Whoever put the door in didn’t trim it out right and we will have to try to fix things with some additional molding, so I will get to that eventually and get it fixed and painted. I did get the railing painted and installed again with my newly sprayed hardware on the right.
Outside, we got new gutters installed. That was huge too, since the house had no gutters at all. We found out from the neighbors that about 2 years ago, the new concrete siding was put on this house, as well as a new roof. When that was done, apparently, they didn’t replace the gutters and it has been gutter-less all this time. Not anymore! Yay for the new siding and roof, that is a biggy!
My dad worked on getting some shingles up on the little roof over the backdoor, so that is coming along too. It will be awhile before he finishes trimming it out completely and I’ll wait a bit before painting it all white, but one day it will really be cute.
He added some trim to the ends too and has a little more trimming out to do and then it will be ready to paint. He’s going to put some metal up in the ceiling part and I will paint it out. Pretty impressive, isn’t it, this little roof. How many almost 85 year old men can still do this? That Daddy o’mine is amazing!
Back in the kitchen, it is finally time to tear out the last wall of base cabinets that houses the sink. We left it as long as we could and now it’s time to rip it out.
He got off the old faux butcher block backsplash that was oh, so ugly. Behind that was more filth! This was such a dirty kitchen, it was unbelievable. But tearing everything down to the bare walls at least lets me get the walls primed and clean again.
Dad worked hard on getting those nails out that held the cabinets in place and finally we got them all out and in the backyard.
The old cabinets were so rickety and unstable and I’m so happy I didn’t try to keep them.
Because look what was behind just this row of cabinets. YUCK with a capital Y! More roach crap to get out of there.
Disgusting, I know!
So, I brought my primer out and got busy priming all those walls and at least covering up and sealing the filth.
And now at least it looks better and feels better.
Clean and white, I will take that. Now we have a blank canvas for those new kitchen cabinets from Ikea. Can’t wait to start on that, but first we’ve got hardwood floors to install. That’s going to be a big job and we are tackling that ourselves. Bought an angled floor nailer from Floor and Décor and we are ready to start nailing now. It might take us weeks, but we will get ‘er done eventually.
That’s it for this week. Hardwoods arrived on Tuesday and I’ll tell you all about those later.
Thanks as always for stopping by and following along on this house renovation journey! I appreciate all of you out there reading along.
Lisa @ Paintbrush & Screwdriver says
Rhoda, what about those panels from Lowes/Home Depot that look like pressed tin?
http://www.lowes.com/ProductDisplay?partNumber=240793-82801-B50-21&langId=-1&storeId=10151&productId=1068567&catalogId=10051&cmRelshp=req&rel=nofollow&cId=PDIO1
You’d probably have to spray paint the frame/grid silver to blend in. Just an idea. I’ve always wanted to try something with them but never knew what.
Whatever you do, I’m sure it will be pretty!
dee dee says
Rhoda,
i have enjoyed watching you transform your beautiful new home! We did two homes last year… a total gut job and a smaller scale job (mostly cosmetic) on a small cottage my inlaws live in! We not only painted the paneling in the cottage but also painted all the knotty pine in the cottage as well! Like your den… the painted paneling lit up the room and the whole cottage is now bright and airy!
You and your dad are doing a beautiful job!
dee dee
laura @ the shorehouse says
Love it! I don’t know why everyone doesn’t just paint that stuff, I tell you what. The room ours was in was this VERY dark, textured, knotty stuff…but I painted it a gray-ish white in the hopes it would look somewhat nautical. And…it kind of does! Vaguely driftwoody, and I love it. Makes me want to hire myself out to paint people’s bad panels. 🙂
Also, I would very much like to hire your super handy dad for my kitchen!
Pat in Chicago says
Rhoda,
I LOVE seeing your posts on your home renovation! Like I said before, this would have been a great HGTV series. Keep the updates coming.
Jake's a Girl says
Simply Amazing & Wonderful!
Joy says
I just found your site and love it! I wasn’t going to comment but when I saw the drop ceilings (yuck) it brought back a memory that might work for this ceiling. Years ago, while my husband was in college he worked part time with the school carpenter. One evening we were invited over to his house and they had done something I had never seen before with the ceilings. They had used a thin wood panel (I think it looked like birch) and put that up. Over that they had thin strips of another wood that was a bit darker that was about an inch or two wide. With the strips they made differant size rectangles and squares. The strips were all at 90 degree angles but veried in the placement to give a random pattern over the wood panel.
It would be easy to get a similar feel and create a drop ceiling.
Lynn Matteo says
Rhoda,
Looks great! So much hard work ~ a labor of love. It looks beautiful already:)
Lynn
Rebecca says
Wow! As always, I am so very impressed with all that you and your awesome parents accomplish each week! About that dropped ceiling-you know, it doesn’t look bad at all the way it is right now. But, if you really want/need to change it, Amanda at Dixie Delights Blog used a panel ceiling in her basement that was really pretty and almost looked like something a cool boutique would have. Sorry, if I were more computer savvy, I’d link the page!
Karen McCullough says
Wonderful update !! I agree with a previous post – this would have made a great HGTV series – at least it would have been real, informative, and not fake like most of their shows have become.
Love your updates. Great job that you and your parents are doing !!
Karen in Texas
Elizabeth says
Was that mold behind the kitchen sink and cabinets? If so, you might want to check if you need to do something more than prime. Don’t want you to get your pretty kitchen in there and have a problem down the line. That stuff can make you so sick!
Love seeing all that paint up on the walls. The power of paint is certainly working it’s magic on your new home. So excited to see what comes next!
patti g says
i llove, i looove it, i llloove it –
do you have an idea on when you may move in
this fall? we should all do an online housewarming
for you!!!
hugs, p
katie goldsworthy says
I duked it out with the man in my house! Painted that wood panneling!
Your house is looking sooo much better. There’s nothing I love more than seeing an nasty house made beautiful!
–Katie
@ Creatively Living
nancy says
I don’t know how you do it and stay so positive and upbeat. Of course I know the end results are worth it but it’s got to be so tiring at times. God bless you and your parents in this massive change-over.
maureen says
Hi Rhoda…thanks for sharing your reno progress. It’s been fun watching and seeing how things are changing and improving so dramatically. For the drop ceiling in the den, I wanted to mention that Candice Olsen used a coffered tile in place of the regular drop ceiling tile and it fit into the standard grid system. It looked fabulous and might be just what you need. Good luck!
Laura says
Hello! I am loving how the house is coming. Have you considered painting the ceiling all black? There are some inspiration pictures on Pinterest with it painted that way. I think it would look wonderful with your doors.
Arlene Grimm@Nanaland says
I have painted paneling too and it is a job but so worth it!! Have you considered replacing the ceiling tiles with the pressed tin knock offs that are available now? I have seen it done on tv and it looks much better than the acoustic tiles…something to consider. One of my friends used it for her back splash and it looked really good. It is very versatile. Love how the house is coming along and cannot wait to see it when you move your furniture in!! Hats off to your daddy….he is such an inspiration!
Arlene Grimm@Nanaland says
Just saw that I am not the only one suggesting pressed tin!! I think it would look great!
Terri says
Hi Rhoda,
Your paneling looks awesome painted in that pretty color! You are truly working miracles in that house! I so look forward to my daily Rhoda “fix”! LOL I’m struggling with some sudden serious health issues and life is really scary right now but I always get comfort from visiting my favorite blogs. You GO, GIRL!!!!
Heather H. says
I love seeing everything come along – but that kitchen – eek! so gross!!
allison mcclellan says
Your dad is awesome!
Lori @ Lori May Interiors says
Rhoda, the den looks amazing! I love that color and you hardly notice the drop ceiling anymore. The kitchen looks so much better and I know it must feel better too. I’m back from TN the end of the week. Can’t wait to see it in person!
Take care and tell your sweet dad that I said hello!
Lori