Cheap fabric softener mixed with hot water OR vinegar and hot water both work well to remove paste. The trick is to get it on the wall and let it sit about ten minutes, long enough for the chemicals to do their job. A extra wide putty knife has been my favorite tool for this chore however it can ding the wall if you get too carried away. I usually do both a roll of towels at he baseboard to catch drips and a plastic tarp over the rest to catch flying debris. I like to wipe the putty knife after I use it into a pail so it is clean for the next swipe on the wall. Sometimes my aim into the bucket isn't what it should be and it's a nice help to have that plastic there on the floor to catch mistakes. Paper that has been removed and dried is just as nasty to remove as paper from a wall.

Thank you all for your responses! It appears to be boards, there's no gaps between, and one of the adjoining rooms (the dining room) has the exposed boards which we think is charming and adds to the farmhouse feel. The hall is about 4 feet across, 16 feet long, and has 14 foot ceilings. The height makes us nervous about installing drywall. My husband would be doing it himself, I'm disabled and cannot get up on ladders. We were hoping to take off the wallpaper, plaster, do a paneled molding along the bottom quarter of the room, and install a tin ceiling. We might try the steam technique on one side with no outlets and see how it goes!

Primer. I don't know a name brand to recommend, but the answer is definitely primer. When we moved into our house 20 years ago, I wanted to remove the paper from two bathrooms. Here's how it went: I started in the master bath, and it was SO EASY. Literally, 15 minutes later the walls were bare. The stuff pulled off in huge sheets, and the bits that didn't come off were easy to pull. I was so confident! Why do people whine about this chore? Then I moved on to the hall bath (unfortunately, the larger bath). Hours later I had removed maybe 10% of the wallpaper, and I was in a foul mood. I did some reading, and the next day -- and the next and the next and the next -- I tried hot water, chemicals, a special scraper. It was a miserable job. When the wallpaper people came to install the new stuff, I asked them WHY the two bathrooms had been so different, and they explained primer to me. By the way, I love the fish.

Get a REAL wallpaper-stripper! * Roll/brush on a couple coats about 20 minutes apart. * Here's the TRICK..... * Get some light (half-mil) painters-plastic. Press it on the wall. * The idea here is to keep the stripper from drying-out, by using the plastic film!! It's the same reason you wrap up Meatloaf in Saran-wrap! * Leave it on for a couple hours....watch a Football or Baseball game :-) * Then, pull some plastic back, & start scraping. Consider getting one of those BBQ Grill scrubbers with the handle & open scrubby-head. This will help you chew-thru the paste. * Now.....rinse, rinse, & rinse again! * Then apply a couple coats of Gardz.! Faron