Help! Husband & I bought our home over 2 years ago and have made many changes so far. One of them was covering our wood paneling with a drywall mud texture. Turns out, that was a horrible idea becuase it has warped over time, cracked, and is now peeling off. We have spots in our living room where you can see the paneling underneath. My question is what do we do now? Having someone come in and drywall the place is the simplest idea but also the most costly. Another idea is to scrape the texture off (or simply peel it off in some areas) and just paint the paneling. But my husband is worried that we won't be able to get all of the texture off. Anyone have experience with this? Any tips for scraping this mess off with the least damage done to the walls as possible? We are considering every option at this point.

I am trying to do a minor remodel on my small basement bathroom. It has a very low ceiling that is unfinished and has a couple of big pipes from the bathroom above it coming down through the ceiling and into the floor. It makes it difficult to make it look finished. I don't think I really have the room to box in the pipes. The bathroom has a vanity, toilet, and a plastic shower stall from god knows when. I would like to replace the shower stall but it would cost more than my budget will allow so I am just cleaning it up and replacing the fixture on it. My main concern is the ceiling. It is low so a drop ceiling would make it very low and I'm not sure the drop ceiling would work well with all the pipes anyway. I was thinking of just painting it all white but I'm not sure how that will look. I have considered drywall but then I lose access to the pipes and it seems like a pain. I was wondering if anyone else has run into similar problems and how they dealt with them. Thanks.