Hello! Not sure if I am replying too late, but I just recently went through this in my "new" rental home that had a wood paneled room.

Since we plan to eventually gut the room if we decide to buy the house, I took a short cut. First, I gave the walls a good scrubbing. Then, I sanded (150 grit) all of the paneling and wiped all excess dust away with a damp cloth. Now, this is the part that I skipped: if you plan on keeping the paneling up, you'll probably want to fill the grooves in with some joint compound, using a putty knife. Let it dry and sand out any bumpy spots or ridges. Then you'll be ready to prime and paint. I used BINZ primer on my walls. 2 coats because of the darkness. Let it dry, of course, and then paint on!
I didn't have any problems, and it looks a lot better!

Thank you very much BGlad for responding to my post. No, you did not answer too late. We are planning on closing on the house in the beginning of March. I wanted to have some of the rooms, primarily the bedrooms, painted before we moved in. Thank you again for the information, and I'll let you know how it turned out :-)

HI, We recently purchased a 1978 model with horrible brown paneling. I successfully painted most of it with Behr paint. I picked a lovely shade of green called Home Song, and Jasmine white on the ceilings. I did use the Behr paint with primer in it. It looks great. I didn't do anything with the grooves, just painted them. I will see if I have a photo..

Ok here's a photo..
I hope.
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