Drywall

Though Matt and I are big believers in learning how to do a project and completing it yourself, there are some projects that are a little over our heads. In addition to the roof, we hired professionals to complete the drywall and the new floors. When we bought our house, half of the walls were covered in dark wood panelling. We tossed around a lot of ideas for how to deal with all of this panelling (removing it, painting it, etc). Ultimately, we decided that the best way for us to deal with the panelling was just to cover most of it up. We hired a team of drywallers to come in and cover over half of the wood-panelled walls with 1/4 inch drywall. While they were drywalling over the wood, they also skimcoated the ceilings that had recently been de-popcorned. The skimcoating was more to give us an even surface to paint and to clean up any mistakes that had happened while we were removing the popcorn (a couple of nicks here and there).

The wood panelling made our house dark. Like a cave. Here's what the hallway looked like before we covered up the wood panelling:

And here's the after. This is after the popcorn was removed and the drywall was put up, but before the new floors went in.

Here's our before show of the living room. So dark! This was taken on our final walk-thru before we closed, so not only is the wood no longer there, the flooring has been replaced and the skylights were added. The room is so light and friendly now.
Here's the after of the drywall in the front room. We chose to leave the ceiling and beams natural wood (Matt's family owned lumbar companies, he loves the look).