Thought I'd give a followup.

The students washed the walls quite well, and when they were dry put on two coats of GOOD white primer. This was followed by two coats of color, an indoor-outdoor Behr from Home Depot in a mild yellow.

When it was finished the rooms were transformed. Formerly nicknamed the "Cave", my wife now nicknamed the larger room "The Sun Room" because of its sunny look (a north-facing patio door takes up better than 60% of the north wall.

I've been putting down a baseboard, painted white high-gloss. The "Sun Room" is now begging for something like white wicker furniture!

We're going to have decent lighting put in.

Which brings up the discoveries made during the painting.

The fluorescent lights in the "Sun Room" are actually two-tube shop lights set in a four-tube suspended ceiling hole. Some of the wall paneling was so cheap, the "grooves" so shallow, that the paint filled the "grooves" and it now looks like wallboard.

The paneling was, as I feared, glued on. It was glued to both horizontal and vertical boards that, as far as I can tell, are glued to something else. Painting the paneling a light color REALLY made some of the defects stand out -- things like an eighth-inch gap between panels, for instance (I've been filling these in).

What I can't bring myself to understand is the shoddy work that was done. Yes, I've done "that's good enough" work in the past and I'll probably do it in the future. But I'm repairing things that a slight amount of care would have prevented in the first place.

Oh well. When I get it done it will look something like one of those "cottages" you can find up in Alexandria Bay of New York state, those old summer homes.

But most importantly to me is that my wife likes it. She likes it a lot. And that's why we started it in the first place, really: to give her a place to spread out her quilting.