Basement Makeover Part 1 (Before & Progress)

When we bought our house almost four years ago, I knew I wanted to do something with the basement, because I HATED the wood paneling down there. After I got back from my Louisiana trip, I decided to finally do something about it. So I started painting! I thought I'd get this whole thing done in a few days, but I severely under estimated the work that it was going to take. Here's a reminder of what the basement looked like when we first bought it:

stairs that lead to the basement

one end...

the other end...and super blurry--sorry!

It's basically one giant room, which is great, I love the amount of space down there. But the wood paneling, drop ceiling, and florescent lights were just too outdated for me. We moved our stuff in and basically created two areas: a game area with the Ping Pong table, and a seating area with the TV. These photos are a couple years old, but it basically looked the same because I never put any effort in to this space.

If I had an unlimited budget, I would have ripped out the paneling, drop ceiling, and lights and replaced with drywall and canned lights. But that wasn't in the budget. So paint it was! I did some research about painting paneling, and decided to jump in. I started by priming EVERYTHING. It took so long, because you have to get in every single groove. But I finally got it all primed, which made a huge difference:

don't mind all the junk piled in the middle of the room,,,,

Just priming over the wood paneling made the room seem so much bigger and brighter! Getting everything primed took me 2-3 weekends of work. Then it was time to paint. I went with light gray paint and white for the trim. I'll do a full blog post soon with pics of the space completely painted, but here's a little preview of what the paint looks like:

Have you ever painted paneling before? Any tips or tricks to share?