My boyfriend and I just moved into a house where the previous owner
apparently collected and loved horrendous wallpaper. We made removing
it and painting our very first priority. We've had no problem in most
of the rooms, some of it was even the peel-off kind. Then we got to
the kitchen...

After a few days of exploration (peeling away different levels,
experiementing with the DIF wallpaper gel stuff I bought) I think I've
figured out what's going on in there. The outer-most layer is your
basic kitchen wallpaper with the vinyl on the outside that you can
peel off by hand and then the paper layer under it. This stuff is
pretty easy to get off with the wallpaper removal tools that I bought,
no problems there. Under that, however, is where the nightmare begins.
Apparently rather than taking down the old, original wallpaper, the
previous owners decided that paining over it (!!) would be a good
idea, then they papered over that.

The only successful way that I've found to get this stuff off is to
pull it off in one big layer. I remove the outer layer of wallpaper
first and try to get down to the paint layer. I then soak it with the
DIF gel and pull off the paint and the original wallpaper off by hand,
which comes of it good-sized sheets. The result of this so far has
been only vaguely successful. On the one hand, the majority of the
walls look fine (I'm not sure if they were primed first or not, what
do I look for?) and just need the original paste washed off. In other
spots the paper backing on the drywall comes off with the wallpaper
and leaves brown gashes in my walls.

So questions a 1) Is there any better way to get the wallpaper off
than what I'm doing? The holes that I'm gouging in the paper are
relatively small so far, but I don't want to make it any worse. 2) How
do I fix these holes? I've heard that I can put some drywall tape over
them and spackle and sand and sand and it should be ok. Is that true?
Re-drywalling is not an option. 3) There is a convex corner where the
builders used the basic metal corner thing and applied the joint
compound right to that with no tape or paper or anything. Is that
normal? Either way, the joint compound behind the removed paper has
all fallen off and the bare metal is exposed. How do I fix that? 4)
We're planning on painting once we get all this wallpaper off. Are
there any special steps (aside from the obvious priming that needs to
be done over the bare drywall) that need to be done to make it either
viable at all or easier?

Thanks so much for any help, we definitely need it. I don't know how
much longer we can live with this horrible wallpaper!