Chris Kinnamon of Baytown, Texas describes a technique used to cover up unwanted paneling:

A friend of mine purchased a home recently which was structurally sound but in desperate need of a cosmetic freshening. The house is about 25 years old, and like many houses of that vintage it doesn't have drywall. No, for some inexplicable reason fake woodgrain paneling was popular in those days and that's exactly what all of the inside walls were covered with.

We weren't terribly excited by the prospect of tearing down all the old paneling, then measuring, cutting, and sanding drywall for every room in the house. Frankly, that would have been way too expensive for my friend's budget, not to mention the fact that we have never worked with drywall 
before. (It also doesn't help that we are a bit lazy!) Instead, we asked around and discovered that it is possible to make cheap tacky paneling look like drywall by simply rolling on drywall mud.

The first step for us was to pull off all the old trim and primer the paneling. We used Behr primer formulated especially for paneling, but also found that Glidden primer ($25 for 5 gallons at Lowe's) worked just as well. We rolled on a total of two coats.

The next step was very important for giving the illusion of drywall. Most paneling that you will see in stores has the cheap woodgrain look, but also has grooves cut every 8 to 10 inches, which supposedly furthers the illusion. We found that rolling mud over these grooves does not completely hide them! The mud shrinks down and "telegraphs" the surface underneath. To get a truly flat surface, we took adhesive drywall tape--the "mesh" tape--and simply covered over the seams. We found that this is the only method that works. We tried filling in the seams with mud, spackling compound, etc. and they shrink down after drying and show the seam anyway. Mesh tape is definitely the best product to use.

So far the work had gone fast, but that was about to change. The next step was to apply the drywall mud. We used 5-gallon buckets of mud, and scooped the contents into a paint tray. Next we put a looped brush onto an ordinary paint roller, and rolled it back and forth to gather up some mud. After 
that, we simply rolled up and down to get a nice texture. At first we noticed a very coarse texture, but as we rolled over the same area several times (with less and less pressure on the wall) the texture got smaller and smaller, until it looked like real drywall. This process was pretty slow and tedious, but then again so is putting up drywall. The difference is this required hardly any skill at all.

We found out the hard way that Sheetrock brand name mud is the easiest to apply. We saved 50 cents per bucket when we bought no-name mud, but it was too thick, which made it difficult and time-consuming to apply. We also learned not to use "texture" paint. It costs much more, and it is way too thin to fill in seams or imperfections of any size. 

We let the wall texture dry overnight. The next day we were excited by how much better it looked than dark, gloomy paneling! We then proceeded to paint the walls--big mistake. Without applying primer to the bare texture, the paint had poor coverage. It seems that texture is like a sponge, and it soaked up our expensive brand-name paint. Even worse, it must have soaked up some pigments in the paint more than others, because our light beige paint appeared to have a strong pink tint to it! By applying primer before painting we solved both these problems.

After painting the walls and applying some nice looking white trim, the house looks completely different! For a few hundred dollars and a modest amount of unskilled labor, we were able to achieve a look almost identical to professionally installed drywall. Our method was cheaper, easier, and much 
faster than installing drywall ourselves. In addition, the wood paneling is still in place, which means that my friend can hang pictures and so forth without having to find a stud to nail into. 

The only disadvantage (if you want to call it that) is that rolled texture looks a little different than the usual sprayed texture you see in new homes. Not bad, just different. We still have one room left, and we may try watering down the mud so that we can spray it through a texture gun, in order to get the sprayed look (and more importantly, to save time). We're not sure if thinner mud will fill in the seams adequately, so we will probably try this method on a piece of scrap paneling before doing the entire room.

Chris responds:

Regarding the durability of the wall texture, I cannot honestly say that I know 100% that it will withstand the test of time, since it has only been up 5 or 6 months. I can say, however, that we have driven nails into it quite vigorously for hanging pictures and putting up trim. It seems to be very durable stuff, we looked closely and didn't notice any cracking whatsoever. We have pushed on the paneling, flexed it, even banged on it pretty good with our fists and we cannot get anything to break loose. Humidity has not been a problem either. Neither the cold, dry air in January or the miserably humid spring air has caused any problems. Another friend of ours did the same for an even older house a year ago and hasn't had problems either.

I would mostly recommend this method for those who are planning on tearing down their paneling and putting up drywall anyway. If the walls go bad in a couple years, we tear it down like we had planned to begin with, and all we've wasted has been spare time and a very modest amount spent on primer and mud.

A couple of extra notes: It probably would have been a good idea to sand before applying primer. A cheap dual action sander wouldn't have hurt. Still, our paneling didn't exactly have a glass-smooth finish, and our primer specifically said that it would stick to paneling.

Chris explains:

There is no drywall at all under any of the paneling. We didn't think about that, we just assumed that since the building inspector checked everything out, there weren't any problems. (Actually there was drywall at one time, but the house flooded with an inch of water before the city dug the ditches properly. That's how my friend got such a good price on an all-brick 3 bedroom house. The previous owners took the easy path and threw on some paneling, and replaced the carpet with cheap vinyl flooring everywhere--I guess replacing that is next!)

Copyright © 2000, 2005  HammerZone.com and Chris Kinnamon

Written May 13, 2000
Revised  (Formatting) January 12, 2005