Memories of paneled walls

[JustDave]

Wood paneling was an upgrade. The 1st couple of houses when I was growing up had some kind of thin wallboard that had taped seams and then just painted.

This reminds me of a rental house I lived in for awhile. It was back when I was working my way through school living month to month. Somebody had probably built the rental unit themselves. I don't know if it was sheet rock or some kind of insulated board. It was taped, but unfinished. Someone mudded the tape and applied it to the seams, but never blended it into a continuous wall or ceiling, which is the part that takes the skill. The tape showed right through the paint.

 

[Marv Malone]

My childhood bedroom had brown pecky cypress walls. Knots and holes in it. I liked it.

 

[Babs2u]

I agree, IMO it’s best to stick with the basics and change/update the accessories.

I agree and feel the same way about my wardrobe.

 

[Michael Z]

In a paneled room in our basement I filled all the grooves and taped the seams as one would with drywall. Then primed and painted. It turned out very nice.

 

[Kadee]

Hubby’s parents had the while inside of the house in those dark brown panels as well as hard panelled lining in the bathroom it grey with a tiny blue flower design on it, think it came in a gold~ ish flower design ~ it was asbestos.

It was like this ….




Where I grew up most homes Internal walls were old sugar or potato bags which were whitewashed after they were hung

 

[Tommy]

I really, really liked the actual eight-inch, tongue-and-groove, knotty pine paneling in my grandparents house that they built in the early 1950s. Unfortunately, that forever colored my view of this 1960s-70s particle board stuff. It has always seemed cheap looking to me.

That said, I've lived in homes that had it and it was okay.

 

[dobielvr]

I used to clean apartments back in the early 80s and they had this one wall of that wood paneling. I'd clean it with a spray can of cabinet cleaner. It made it shine a little, but it was still drab brown wood paneling.

 

[JustDave]

Wood paneling was an upgrade. The 1st couple of houses when I was growing up had some kind of thin wallboard that had taped seams and then just painted.

I grew up with lath and plaster, in house built around 1910. I never paid much attention to building, until I was 30 when I built three houses by myself. But in my late teens I began hearing occasional talk about "dry wall," which just sounded like one more way to cover a wall. Indeed going out on my own and renting my first couple houses, dry wall was was just like a plywood substitute nailed to interior framing and the pieces joined together with some kind of tape and a covering of slap dap plaster. You could see each individual 4 X 8 panel. In fact your eyes were absolutely drawn to the seams so that no improvement in building was at all evident.

Later I began to understand that skilled professional tapers could make the wall smoother than the plaster I had grown up with. In fact it was so smooth that some people asked the pros to texture the finished walls with pressurized splatter guns, and eventually with intentional sweeping trowel processes that gave it an old fashioned plaster look, although a lot more elegant.

The first house I built, I was fine with the carpentry, but marginal on finish work. I tried to do drywall finishing on my own, and started by doing a closet. It was an embarrassing disaster. I didn't understand it at all and hired a professional. On my next house, I hired a guy who was willing to let me work with him and he taught me most of the skills. Now my drywall is good enough that I've actually done it for others, but most professionals (not all) are better and three times faster than I am.