it is not that hard to take them down. you should have drywall behind.

Since the prev owners gorilla glued (in a zig-zag pattern) the paneling, it's only gonna come off using the brute force method. Sounds like too much work and messy. So, instead, you can try adding moulding
BTW, the prev owners installed the paneling correctly using gorilla glue because at no places is the paneling buckeling/warping...it's though a nightmare to take off

Why not paint it??we had paneling and I made it cleaner and brighter with paint