Painted Wood Paneling

When we first looked at our house I liked the wood paneling in the bedroom, but I knew someday I wanted to paint it white.  It took me about 4 years to get the nerve to tackle this project.  

This is what the room looked like before:

I did lots of research on just how to cover the knots in the knotty pine.  When we painted the paneling in our other bedroom we used shallac based primer which smelled horrible and after a few months the knots showed through anyway.  So, this time I went with an oil-based spray primer (recommended by a drywall guy).

I sprayed the primer on just the knots to seal them.  This paneling has been on the walls for a while so that may effect exactly how well the primer covers, but this stuff did a great job on these walls.

After one coat of the oil-cased spray primer on the knots, I painted one coat of regular latex primer on the rest of the walls.

This picture is after the above plus one coat of paint.  The white we picked was Dover White by Sherwin Williams, which is a nice warm crisp white.

All in all, it took one coat of primer on the knots, one on the walls and two coats of paint.  It only took two coats of chalk board paint to cover that wall.

I am really happy with how it came out.  It has been months since the walls were painted and no knots have shown through, so I would say the oil-based primer did the trick.

To see the full post on this girl's bedroom makeover go here.