Is Painting Paneling a Crime? - Page 2

Fortunately for Omnispace and wbisset, a few readers have shared solutions.

"I experimented with a number of different techniques and ended up with a couple that worked pretty well together," wrote a member called evergreen. "I found a product called 'Easy Liquid Sander' [W.M. Barr & Co.] that does a pretty good job of dissolving the current finish and evening out the color on the walls. I used a stiff scrub brush to apply it to the walls, and cloth rags to spread it around and even out the surface. It makes a bit of a mess, so you will need to protect any furniture or floor that might be splashed, and wear good Playtex gloves to protect your hands."

"After that," evergreen continued, "I used a rub-on stain called Jel'd Stain that comes in a gray that matched the original pretty well. I used either a cloth rag or a sponge to apply it to the walls, and rubbed it in pretty thin so that the grain shows through nicely. As the final step, I rubbed on a coating of Howard's Feed and Wax to give it nice matte, but rich finish. We also replaced some of the paneling at the same time with new lauan panels, and these ended up matching too!"

When it comes to replacing panels, member tborselino wrote, "Southern Lumber in San Jose carries lauan panels that are a good match for the originals. They're unstained. They seem to get them from a couple different sources, so some are more on the red side, some on the yellow side. Make sure you pick ones that match."

"It can be tricky replacing a single panel on a wall," warned a member named Jake. "In my experience, the new lauan panels are a slightly different thickness than the old, which makes connecting into corner quarter-rounds tricky. Also, there were several different stain tints originally, so even getting an original panel from someone else might require some extra work on that front."

Of course, some people find the stained mahogany either too difficult to restore or too dark to abide.

"I'll probably get shot for saying this, but for us, painting over the paneling was one of the best design decisions we made," admitted a reader named Cathye, who painted her walls Navaho White. "We searched for three years to find furniture that would actually look good against the woody walls, and finally gave up...In the end, the hubby let me paint the walls. What a difference."

"If we had not painted the walls, we would probably be sitting on orange crates," she concluded.

"The paneling was already painted in my Eichler, so I was saved the decision regarding restoring it," contributed Randy Feriante of Dura-Foam Roofing and Solar Center. "My feeling is, we are individuals, living in our own homes...If we make changes and enjoy our homes more, we have made a good choice."

And the controversy continues to this day.

• For more reading about your home's original lauan paneling, and for additional tips to restore it, click here.