Waving the white flag

So, while the bathroom waits to be finished I started to focus on the dining room, thinking it would be one of the easier rooms to get done. Thought I could strip down the wallpaper, slap some paint on it and be good to go. But as I learn through this process, nothing is ever easy. Here's how the wall looked when I started:


Here's what I found under that wallpaper:



Uh. Ok. For more of my nightmare, check out this picture.
The area above the window had to be filled in with plaster. I believe the green stuff is some ancient skim coating that was done before the original wallpaper was put up. Add to that a couple areas where some water damage from an old (now fixed) roof leak was fixed and the pink joint compound I've spread on to fix some areas where the original paper actually did come off, and this is one scary mofo picture!

Anyway, this wall is pretty much f'ed for paint, as I don't have the time or frankly the patience to do the amount of skimcoating that would have to be done to make this paintable. So, I guess I'm going to have to put more wallpaper up! I know I was so against it, I just don't think I have a choice here, if for nothing else, for the sake of my sanity! There is actually some pretty cool wallpaper out there, this is from a book called Simple Space, and here is what I've chosen.

I'm only going to re-paper the 2 walls that had it before, the others will be painted a color that I'll match from the paper. This brings me back to my original color scheme for the living room, black and white with lime green accents. I had switched to a purplish-gray accents, but since the living room really flows into the dining room and I couldn't find any paper that would have worked with that, I'm back to plan A.