I have this 4 season room with old wood paneling. I was hoping there was drywall behind it but when I removed electrical panel I saw that the paneling is almost an inch thick as you can see in the picture below. I got a quote from a contractor he wanted to charge $2000 to install drywall. I really don't want to pay that kind of money. I'm pretty handy and I think I can do this myself. I'll try to save as much window trim as I can. How should I go about getting this done.

I have a similar gap in my kitchen that I built purposefully. I had simple wooden rails built and the space was designed to be exactly the correct width for a standard sheet pan. Now I have all my sheet pans easily accessible, as well as cooling racks and cutting boards and a roasting pan. The space is infinitely flexible.

It is MUCH cheaper to have a few pieces of hardwood added (your professional flooring refinisher can do this for you...for a fee of course) and the whole thing refinished than it is to lay new plywood and then lay new hardwood. A full sand and refinish = $5/sf. That is the average cost. That includes labour and materials. If you need to source some pieces of hardwood and then lace them into the existing floor, it will add a few hundred dollars to the overall job. Now compare that to BAD (low end piece-of-junk) engineered hardwood. You can purchase the hardwood for $4.99/sf (please don't....they aren't worth the "savings") and then you will spend $2-$3/sf to install it...and that does NOT include new plywood (you can add another $2/sf for plywood+labour to install it). Refinish = $5/sf (plus a little more for new wood to be laced in) Add new engineered hardwood = $5 - $12/sf (floor itself) + labour ($2-$3/sf) + plywood.....a grand total of $9/sf - $17/sf. It's your call. The first thing you want to do is check to see how much wood is left on those old planks. Find a floor vent to look at the cross-section. Measure the amount of wood ABOVE the tongue. You will need 3mm of wood to get a full sand/refinish done. Start there. A sand/refinish is ALWAYS cheaper than new flooring. That's why solid hardwood is always more desirable. It can be CHEAPER to own over it's life time (60-80 years) than any other floor.

There is no way to predict how long it is going to take until you know what kind of mess is behind the paneling. You may encounter holes, construction adhesive stuck to the drywall, holes that you made with the crowbar if you're not super careful, moisture damaged drywall, mold....to name a few possibilities. This is roughly how I would approach the job: (Assuming you don't have another bathroom...) 1. Set up a hand wash station in the shower. Wash bowl on a bench. Bucket of water & dipper or pitcher. Electric kettle if you must have hot water. (Possibly eliminate this if there is another sink nearby.) 2. Remove the vanity so you have more room to work. 3. Remove as much paneling as you can. 4. Remove the water tank from the toilet. (I hope you have a two piece toilet.) This should give you enough room to remove the paneling that is behind the toilet. 5. Patch, paint, etc. behind the toilet. Replace the water tank. (Use the old toilet until the room is almost complete to avoid possible damage to new fixture.) 6. Finish patching & painting the rest of the room. 7. Install the new toilet. 8. Install the new vanity.