This is crazy!! We are closing our house in 3 weeks and this exact same wall and carpet! I did see those black sponge looking thing under the carpet too! do you guys have video of before and after for this? We might need to take all the paneling out and put drywalls! take the tiling ceiling off and put new ceiling! It's already encouraging us to do the DIY! Thank you so much
Remove that hallway wall so that you can at least see a little bit of the kitchen from the living room and people can talk to each other without having a wall there blocking them