We have a den we seldom use because it's so dark and we built on another huge room we call our retirement room. It's 25' x 25' and we do most of our living here. I would like to lighten up the old den so maybe we will use it more. I want to whitewash the walls or paint them, but my husband won't let me do anything to the pine paneling in that room. It's old knotty pine and very dated as far as I'm concerned. How can I convince him to let me update it? Are there other ways to cover the old pine?
Is every wall covered in pine? If so, try a compromise. Remove some of the paneling, but leave, say, one entire wall of it. Then you can decorate around it and use it as an accent rather than dealing with a whole room of it.
You could put up some dry wall boards either as wainscot or to cover the entire wall. I've seen some people who were reluctant to remove that beautiful old paneling cover it and then go back to it years later. The paneling is so hard to achieve these days, especially with the patina of the old.
I've thought about putting up one wall, the one opposite the windows, made out of sheet rock and just painting it light. We could always take the wall down if we didn't like it. We've discussed putting in a light tube or a skylight, but the attic is there, so I guess we'd have to go with the light tube.
Those light tubes are really effective. I worked on a house in Texas that had a couple of them and it was really amazing how much it opened up what would otherwise be a very dark space.
The home I grew up in had one of those dark dens as well so I can sympathize with you on this. It had two brick walls that, while lovely, really added a lot of weight to the room and made everything look so dark. But who in their right mind would cover real brick? My parents ended up leaving them as they were, but we hardly ever used that room. I think the idea of keeping a wooden accent wall sounds like a good choice. And, if you do cover it, try to do so in such a way that you can revert back to the paneling in the future.
