I’m about start renovations on a two up two down that has a lot of painted wood panelling. I could really do with people’s advice and opinions please.

The whole house needs re wiring and there’s issues with mould. Will the panelling need to be removed to re wire? Is it ridiculously expensive to remove paint from panelling and if it is removed will it make the cottage too dark. It doesn’t get a huge amount of sunlight. 

Would it be sacrilegious to remove the panelling rather than conserving tradition? I’m really torn about whether to repaint, remove paint or remove panelling completely. I’d be really grateful of people’s opinions.

Way too much for me. I would investigate the black marks in the bedroom, could be damp. I would carefully, there may be asbestos, drill some holes in the wood, to find out what was behind with an endoscope. If there are no problems anywhere I would just plasterboard over the panelling.

rip it all off and start again.

Bit of a personal thing, I quite like it. Part of the character of that age of building.

If you don't want/need a pristine finish, it would be pretty easy to make access hatches in the panelling- just use an oscillating multi tool to cut through the T+G. You'd need to have a few screws to hold the panel in place afterwards- use nice slotted head brass ones with cup washers underneath.

 

I don't think stripping the paint is a good idea. You could spend ages sanding it back, but you'll never get right in to the grooves. And as you say varnished wood can be very dark.

I guarantee there is no insulation behind the panelling in the bedrooms, hence it is cold and condensation can form mould.  Thousands of croft houses were like that.

 

If you want to keep the panneling you can rewire leaving it largely untouched.  You just need to create an access hatch to the coomb spaces at the eaves and be prepared to crawl or use a fish wire.  Take the chance to at least insulate the coomb space.  To insulate the sloping ceilings without blocking the ventilation is a whole other problem which will need the ceiling stripped and is probably impractical anyway as you would loose ceiling height, which there is not much of to start with.

Thank you everyone. The windows have been painted shut hence the lack of ventilation and mould issues. I’m thinking of repainting the panels and learning to live with them. 

If you decide to keep the panelling and make access cuts as needed, check if there's lead paint under the layers of paint before you begin. It's not a massive problem, but you will need to take sensible H&S precautions when dealing with it https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/cis79.pdf