Wood paneling...what to do?

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I live in a 25 year old home just outside of Waterdown, Ontario. The town is called Carlisle and it is in the country. I have many clients in Carlisle, Freelton, Waterdown, and lots in Burlington. Some of my clients with older homes have wood paneling from the 70's and sometimes the 80's. We had the same problem. What to do? What to do? You could rip out all of the paneling and hope that there is drywall underneath. That would be perfect. If there is no drywall, you have to put up new dry wall. That is very expensive and very messy. You could paint over the paneling but that ends up looking very "I've just painted over wood paneling".
What we ended up doing was:
-filling in all of the lines of the paneling with dry wall compound
-sanding it down (you'll probably need one more coat because drywall compound shrinks)
-priming it and painting it.

My husband and I were very pleased with the outcome. I'm not going to lie and say that it was easy, it wasn't. It takes a lot of time because you have to wait for the drywall compound to dry and then sand it (very dusty), do it all over again, prime it and then paint. It took us about 3 weeks to finish. In the end, it cost only about $100.00. The time and effort was worth it because it brought the look out of the 70's and up to date.