I recently decorated my entire 1960s built house for the first time since I moved in a few years ago. I also got new electric and new boiler and radiators. The paper was a nightmare to remove and I used a steamer; some rooms had lining paper. The walls were in a bad state. I had hired a plasterer to fill in the gaps where the old radiators were and where the sockets had to installed. He patched in the gaps in the walls, left from removing the wallpaper, and then I used blown vinyl heavyweight wallpaper which is very easy to hang and covered up the imperfections on the walls. So basically what I'm saying is you might not need the whole room skimmed, a touch up job and heavy blown vinyl wallpaper might be a good compromise.