Rec room paneling

When at my brother's house Tammy and I put up paneling in the rec room.  Back when my mother was alive my brother and mother had taken the paneling down along one wall and planned on replacing it.  They never got to it before my mother died.  The one wall has been without paneling ever since.

Tammy has an eye for what to pick and she found some 'frosted maple' paneling at the local Menards store that would lighten up the room without it being a bland white.

My brother wasn't in the mood to work on the paneling so Tammy and I went ahead and got two sheets of the paneling.  I don't know what I was thinking as we needed two and a half sheets. Yes, I had measured the wall's length before we bought the paneling.  My brother and I drove the next day and got the third sheet of paneling.   Actually this worked out well as Menards got more paneling in stock.  The corners seem to get dinging easily when they ship and move the pieces and the new pieces allowed us to get a sheet without any dings.

When we bought the third sheet we brought a couple heavy items to place on the paneling after we bought it.  My brother doesn't have the tailgate on his pickup and I was worried about driving across town and having the paneling either slide or blow out of the pickup during the drive back to the house.  When Tammy and I bought the first two sheets we nervously kept an eye on the sheets as I drove home.

The paneling was needed for only half of the wall's height.  It was a little tricky cutting the lengths as the shelf above the paneling varied a little over a half an inch in height as it went across the wall.

The house is a split level house and the rec room is  in the lower level.  The paneling covered the part of the room below ground level.  That is why in the first photo you see the white foundation of the house behind the insulation. The shelf sits a little bit above the foundation.

At the far end you see one end of the bar and the other wall that is left to do.  You also can see that Tammy painted the shelf with "puppy brown" paint that she selected to covered the dinged up black paint on the shelf.

I found the half of the paneling that was left over would fit in the rec room hallway outside the bedroom.  Perfect.

If we had more time and support from my brother we could have replaced the paneling in the downstairs bathroom and on the other wall in the rec room that has paneling.  A bar is near that wall and one would have to remove the bar first which is more work than we had time for.  It was enough to just go through stuff and clean around the bar.  I found more stuff for the garage/estate sale we plan to have in the Spring.