I agree w/prev poster, do a small single room first and see what shape your wall are in. Not worth stripping if you'll have to replace or skim coat anyways. Re stripping, here's what worked for me: Get on of these scrapers... http://ace.imageg.net/graphics/product_images/pACE2-960411reg.jpg Get some FAST wallpaper remover (I like better than DIF)... http://www.cornerhardware.com/images/18/18151.jpg Mix the FAST w/hot water in a good heavy duty spray bottle. Mix it a little on the strong side. Let the spray penetrate for a few seconds, then scrape. When you have all the old wallpaper off, you can wash the walls with a mild FAST solution to get all the glue off. Then wash again with something like Dirtex... http://www.cornerhardware.com/images/20/20293.jpg Because of the paint you may have use a paper tiger to score the paint and wallpaper to allow solutions to penetrate... http://www.homeandbeyond.com/dynamic/prod-0074110-prod.jpg Or if it's real bad, maybe a rent a steamer.

DO NOT paint over the paper.Removing it properly should in no way damage the plaster. I have removed thousands of yards of paper over plaster and in almost all cases it will come off fairly easily with a little work. Here are a couple links that will help. http://www.safeandsimple.com/ Here is a link that might be useful: removal

Most of the info you find online is from folks who are stripping modern wallpaper off of sheetrock, and stripping very old wallpaper off of plaster may take a different technique. Sheetrock has a paper layer on top, and if its painted before paper is applied, the wallpaper does not stick that tightly. However, wallpaper that has been applied to raw plaster really sticks to it. I tried perforating the paper withe paper tiger and spraying the wall with remover, but in most areas it didn't really break the old paper loose and I just got small strips to come off. Then I used a steamer and stripped off the larger pieces of wallpaper. Mine appeared to be patterned wallpaper on top of a white wallpaper-like finish that had been applied when the plaster was new. I first stripped off whatever I could using the steamer and paper tiger, but there was still a lot of small sections left on the wall. I then used the steamer and a razor blade (in a holder) held at a very slight angle to strip off all the remains. I am right handed, so I held the steamer on one section with my left hand while I scraped paper off with my right hand and continued to work from right to left. This was a slow process, but I did get it all off. I then hired a guy to strip my living room wall and his technique was different. He steamed it much more and was able to get both layers of paper to break loose fairly quickly. However, he used so much steam that the water dripped down between the baseboard and wall, and onto the concrete walls in the basement below, and he had to paint those walls to cover the streaks after he was done. My technique was slower, but his was much messier because of all the hot steam. Bruce

"We thought the historical society would know what they were doing." They know what they are doing,so does anyone that has bought or sold a piece of real estate. They are "putting the screws to you". The evidence point's to you being the one who doesn't know what they are doing. If you don't have a realtor repersenting you in this deal,I reccomend you stop worrying about wallpaper and get one right away.