Removing Paneling - anyone done it easily?

Ok... I am looking at a house and I think the owners of this house single-handedly kept the panelling industry in business. The panelling is EVERYWHERE.

Anyways... has anyone gone through and removed panelling? I guess my biggest question would be if there is typically sheetrock behind panelling?

I don't think the panelling itself is difficult to take down (isn't it just tacked on?) I am curious what type of job I would be faced with after the panelling is off. Would the walls need to be skimcoated?

Has anyone gone through this process? I am talking the old school brown paneling that goes from floor to ceiling.

Thanks in advance.

Re: Removing Paneling - anyone done it easily?

Back in the 70's, my parents put up panelling and they used caulking glue and nails. So when it came time to take it down, all the walls needed to be sheet rocked again.

Im not sure how old your panelling is but it might be glued and nailed to the wall

Your other questions, about sheetrock behind it...we have a room that has panelling but no sheetrock. JMO but I think that is the lazy way of doing it.

Good Luck

Re: Removing Paneling - anyone done it easily?

We have it in our basement, but luckily it was nailed to the studs and there is no insulation behind it.

Hopefully, you have plaster walls behind it and not sheet rock. If its the latter, you may need to redo the SR depending on how the paneling was put up.

GL!

Re: Removing Paneling - anyone done it easily?

Like the previous poster said, it depends on what was used to put it up.

My house has paneling in every room (at least one accent wall if not the entire room). My kitchen had 2 layers of paneling then wallpaper underneath that!

90% of it came right off (just nails, lots and lots and lots of little nail holes). A little joint compound in the holes made the walls looks brand new.

the other 10% had either glue which we then had to skimcoat entire walls, or had wallpaper underneath which we either sheetrocked over with thin sheetrock or removed the wallpaper and skimcoated the walls.

Re: Removing Paneling - anyone done it easily?

We just took it down in a bedroom, there is sheet rock behind it, but we need a really good spackle/skim coat job

Re: Removing Paneling - anyone done it easily?

as everyone has said it depends on the application. I would try to take one panel down and see what your working with. We are buying a house with paneling in the livingroom/dinning room and bathroom. We are taking it down even if we have to sheet rock because i refuse to live with it since it makes the room so dark. If I really didnt' have the funds to sheet rock then paint over it.

Re: Removing Paneling - anyone done it easily?

Our living room and dining room had a lot of paneling. It was glued on. We had two types of walls behind the paneling - knotty pine and sheetrock.
The sheetrock had to come down and most of the knotty pine walls all came down too. Sanding the glue off of them was very time-consuming and not worth the effort to save them. (We did save one small interior pine wall as an accent wall.)

When the walls were down, we wired the living room for modern amenities (cable, home network, tv) and put in new insulation. We put up the new sheetrock ourselves and then hired out the mudding of the sheetrock. We primed and painted ourselves. The new insulation (and two new windows) did wonders for keeping our home cool with minimal A/C this past Summer so that was a nice silver lining to the time/labor invested and we don't have to look at cords from our wall-mounted tv!

I would assume worst case scenario and factor it into your offer.

Re: Removing Paneling - anyone done it easily?

My brother just did this, the sheetrock was behind the paneling but it was thin so they decided to gut that whole floor and do it the right way. He is only doing one floor at a time so its nto a nightmare

Re: Removing Paneling - anyone done it easily?

all depends on what is behind it - perhaps you can peel off one section in each room to check what's behind it?

we had one room in the house that had 3/4" thick solid wood paneling, and nothing else behind it except for the studs and some insulation. Rather than take it down, we chose to sheetrock over it to ensure the insulation wasn't compromised. Now the room stays toasty warm in the winter and cool in the summer!

Re: Removing Paneling - anyone done it easily?

why remove it - It may come back in style hahhaaha