I have panel boards in my basement. Half the basement is fake wood panelling and half is fake brick panelling - classy. I tried using joint compound but that was going to take a million hours and close to that in dollars to pay for all the spackling. The other thing I considered was textured wall paper that is meant for damaged walls. You can paint over the paper. But again, cost is a factor, and I am afraid the groves will still be visible. My current experiment is with stippling. It obviously won't look like drywall, but so far seems to be an improvement over the fake brick. Does anyone else have any cost effective solutions to ugly paneling?