We have started another home improvement project. Actually we have 3 that have sort of globbed together. First is the roof, then we are getting a wood stove for the basement (because we live in a split-level and it's always freezing in the basement), and since the stove is going into the family room downstairs, we're going to redo that as well.
As an aside: thankfully, I recently had my thyroid checked because I was constantly, unnecessarily tired. It tested low, my doctor prescribed low-does natural thyroid supplement, and I have crazy, wonderful amounts of energy! The kind I always thought that I should have! So, now I have been incredibly productive around the house, tackling numerous, massive projects -like these.
Right now the family room is covered in dark wood paneling with dropped ceilings. Ideally, we would totally re-drywall the entire thing, ceiling and all, but honestly, we plan on living in this house forever, so we can do that another day when we're retired/have more time/have more money for someone else to do it.
So our plan in this: We're going to tear down the ceiling, because there's no way around it. Parts of it are already falling down, you can't really spot repair it, it's ugly, and we need to move the lights. We're going to replace it with a similar method of covering, it will look like beadboard, but has the same acoustic benefits that the tile has. For the walls we are going to create a faux wainscot look by filling in the grooves of the existing paneling on the top 5 feet of the wall, leaving the grooves on the bottom, painting the top a saturated green, the bottom a glossy ivory, attaching a chair-rail and trim and ta da! We will have totally faked new walls! Hopefully it doesn't fail miserably and I have to pretend like this post never happened. The goal is to have to room set up and the stove here by Thanksgiving so that Jake and his dad can install it.
This is Jake's progress in tearing out the old brick wall.Here I am, filling the grooves in the sweet 70's paneling.