joint compound over panelling?

[ken blais]

hi everyone.... i have a room that currently has panelling nailed up in it. i'd like to cover the panelling with a thin coat of joint compound to mimic an old-worldy kind of plaster finish, with bumps, ridges, etc. not gonna sand it when i'm done, just prime and do some kind of paint technique on it. try to make it look like something from an old italian villa or whatever. do i need to do anything to the panelling before i apply the joint compound? do i need to kilz it, or sand it or whatever? will the joint compound stick to it? my first thought was to remove the panelling but in a 130 year old house, i'm thinking they may have put the panelling up for a reason....

any thoughts will be appreciated, thanks, ken

[Tom]

better be stiff...If not, which I'm betting on, the stuff will shatter off. It'd be a mess for quite awhile. Tom Someday, it'll all be over....

[Andy in Fink]

It will stick for a while, but eventually it will flake off..

A better approach is to glue or screw 1/4 inch sheet rock to the panelling and use it as the base for the joint compound. Not that much more trouble and you'll have a permanent texture.

Andy

[Chuck]

The previous owner of my house did what you are speaking of; put a skim-coat of joint compound over existing paneling.

The problem we've run into is that the paneling expands and contracts with temperature and humidity. The result is that we have vertical hairline cracks every four feet along the wall in the winter time when the air is dry.

I've read that you can avoid this problem by using joint tape where the paneling butts together, but I think the much better solution is to either replace the paneling with drywall, or just cover the paneling with some 1/4" drywall.