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If your cabinets are going to be white, why don't you just wait til they are in and see if you can live with the pine paneling on the walls? If the kitchen is open to the other rooms where the paneling won't be painted, then the visual continuity on the walls could be advantageous. Not to mention that once you have your shelves up, and some art work in areas without shelves, you might not be so bothered by the pine. I'm always super conservative about painting wood -- really hard to undo!

If you’re on Instagram check out Addisons Wonderland or the blog at addisonswonderland.com - she’s doing a cabin with a lot of dark wood. The white makes a world of difference.

Here are kitchen Before & In Progress pics...

In progress

All good advice. I will wait until cabinets are painted to decide on painting the planks. Yes it is completely open to the LR m, so I understand what you’re saying about the continuity. Since the upper cabinets are gone there is differences in the color of the stain in the areas that were behind the cabinets so that’s a new problem! I will have to talk to a pro about that. Not sure I’m up for sanding and re-staining 12 ft walls. The countertops are in, yea! So new pic to follow. By the way, although not a skylight, there are 2 windows facing the kitchen approximately 10 feet high.

Just checked out Addisons Wonderland blog. Loooove the white painted planks against the wood ceiling. So bright and cheerful. But again, hubs is so against painting the knotty pine. What is it with men and wood, lol?

I like the picture howtogirl posted, if your husband doesn't want you to paint the wood walls would he allow you to put up some peel and stick wallpaper (not the glue down kind) that's white? You could get one with a subtle design too so it won't be the exact same white as the cabinets and it'll be broken up with the shelves. They even have wallpaper that's meant to look like white shiplap lol

I would be all for wallpaper but it wouldn’t work over the knotty pine planks. They’re tongue and groove so not a continuous flat surface. We would have to apply sheet rock or some other smooth surface over the planks. That would go over like a lead balloon! Men!

You could just get a plain white then and press the paper in the grooves so it looks like it's painted. And I know, my house is from the 1970s and the cabinets are all wood, my husband says he feels guilty tearing them out because it's all red oak but they're truly awful and we need new cabinets and would never get it to match.

if you wanna keep the wood and restore the parts that the cabinet covered I would do a test spot with Danish Oil, I used it for some chairs because I don't trust myself to stain and it's super easy to use, very wet, you just put it on a rag and wipe it on and let it dry for a day or two depending on humidity. They have multiple colors too.

No sanding involved with Danish Oil too.

Christina Fisher, that sounds wonderful! No sanding! Even better. Will definitely give it a go. Also have areas in the bathroom with the same problem and around the new hearth. Thanks so much.

No problem!