Our family room has a brick fireplace with a wood mantel (kind of a rustic look). Wood paneling on the bottom half of all the walls in the room with a chair rail. Currently carpeted - the carpet must go!
Ideas on remodeling this room? Have thought of replacing the carpet with wood flooring to match the rest of the house. Ripping out the wood panels and painting the walls. Unsure about what to do with the fireplace - leave it as is with exposed brick?
The previous owners of our house painted all the wainscoting wood paneling in the house, the mantle, and the bricks around the hearth with the exception of the bricks on the floor in front. I’m not sure I would have done it myself but I think it looks really nice. We have hardwood floors.
The wood floors will be a big lift and freshen it up! Any chance you have a pic of the fireplace? Hard to make suggestions without knowing how it looks (what type of screen, what type of brick, is there any tile, what does the base look like, etc.
I also think it depends how much $ you want to spend. Painting the paneling and chair rail is an inexpensive fix - is it wider paneling - or like wainscotting? What is the style of the rest of the house? Traditional, modern, country, farmhouse, modern traditional…
Looks great!
This is the before that we found on line from a previous listing of the house:
My mom has a large paneled den and ended up taking the paneling off of three walls and painting them an off-white and leaving one wall paneled as an accent wall. It really brightened up the room.
How old is your house? If that panelling is 100 years old, I would think long and hard before ripping it out.
eta: never mind! Confused @momofboiler1 's picture with the OP’s house.
Leave the wood paneling up and have it professionally painted. They can fill in the “gaps” and it will look great. We did this with our family room and were very happy with the results. Tearing off the paneling would have been more expensive and keeping it left more insulation for those walls (which were half underground).
Not home right now, but will try to find a picture to upload.
@momofboiler1 - the room looks great. Makes me think that I should seriously look at painting the wood paneling rather than taking it all off. And H would definitely prefer that if the cost were lower. I think the paneling right now makes the room look dated.
Here are a couple of pictures. You can see the wood paneling in the close up shot of the fireplace. We switched over to a gas fireplace several years ago - one of the best upgrades we ever did!
Paging @notrichenough! I think he had a brick fireplace painted, and it turned out well.
I would paint the wood paneling as @momofboiler1 did. It’s not that hideous Brady bunch stuff.
I think the brick fireplace is dated. I’d get the carpeting out and focus on doing something with the fireplace.
Edit: the wood is nice and I wouldn’t try to fill in the space between the words. It should still be evident that it’s wood, just needs painting.
I agree don’t fill in the “cracks” in the paneling. To be honest, people are buying “paneling” now and installing it TO paint! A professional paint job will do wonders.
Is the paneling horizontal?
Would you consider painting the fireplace? How long do you plan to be in this house? I know it’s a big step to paint a fireplace (you really can’t go back!) but paint can really freshen it, give a great focal point and if wanted, get rid of the “rustic” look.
Gorgeous! Looks like original craftsman woodwork and brickwork.
You inherited it already painted, so you might as well enjoy the new look (I agree it looks pretty too) but original unpainted craftsman features are highly sought after. They look especially stunning with earth-tone paints such as olive greens, golds, rusty oranges etc. rather than the white that the walls are painted in this picture.
Yes, we had some of the ugliest brick you’ve ever seen. Dark, almost black, irregular shapes. It’s known as clinker brick.
Because it was the 70’s, the fireplace was built with a taper from front to back, and a weird angle on one side, which made it impossible to veneer especially with the clinker brick. And it had a very strange wood storage part next to it.
So we decided to paint it, which normally I am not a fan on painting brick, but in this case we didn’t have many options. And we had a mason remove the wood storage part.
I think it came out well, let’s see if I can post some pictures.
I’ve also painted paneling before. It looks good. If it’s 70’s-ish paneling that comes in 4x8’ sheets with the shallow grooves, consider filling the grooves with joint compound, although that’s a lot of work. I just left the grooves on mine, it looked fine.
For shiplap or similar I wouldn’t try to fill any grooves.
Removing it is an option, but it may be glued on addition to nailed, and in that case it will destroy your walls when you pull it off. Even if not glued, there will be hundreds of nail holes you will need to repair.
Here’s some paneling I painted. I had to use several coats of shellac based sealer first to keep the knots and previous stain from bleeding through, even though it’s 50+ years old. Decided not to paint the brick on this one.
What a difference!!
The after is soooo much better.
