Old school Wood Paneling restoration

[jamz84]

Wood wall paneling..you either love it or you hate it. Kilzing and painting over antique paneling seems to be popular to get a brighter, cleaner room appearance, cost efficiency, or to standardize matching furniture. Despite these trends, I have decided to restore all cabinets and paneling to original appearance. My "new" house was built in 1980, and is featured with thus said in kitchen, hall bath, and master bath. Now these are real, solid oak cabinets and drawers throughout, and I'm stripping and sanding these cabinets with Strip-X and re-staining with Minwax "Weathered Oak." When the house was marketed in '80, I would assume they called it "English Oak." The wall paneling, seems to match in color, but I don't know how to restore it.

MY QUESTION: After I filled the "wear and tear" holes with wood putty, I sanded the paneling with a B&D power sander and some parts went down to bare wood, and some spots not. Will the paneling now have a patchy, dark/light appearance after staining because of the power sanding? I only sanded the paneling in the hall bath, but did this ruin it?

[pushkins]

If it's true paneling then you need to be very careful, it's made like engineered flooring thin layers of ply with a very thin veneer over the front, this normally cannot be sanded very well at all.