katybug, you mentioned you don't want it to look bad, so from reading what you are saying, I would much rather take the time and do it right than have to look at a room or wall all the time and never be satisfied because I was in a hurry . If you have knicks, gouges, scrapes, etc. the best thing to do of course is to mud it out; or even if you are going to do a finish with joint compound you are still doing work (unless you want a textured finish). So either way, there is going to need to be work from either way you choose. Just throwing out some of the possibles. Just doing a decorative finish over your wall imperfections with paint is not going to take care of the walls condition, unless you take some other kind of steps to correct what you have mentioned above. One thing for sure after I removed all that paper, I surely wouldn't put anymore up. :)

Here is a link to a site that sells wallies (wallies are parts of wallpaper designs that have been cut out and packaged to sell) it says something like wallies are only slightly acidic, and pose a very little risk to your albums, (If I remember correctly) so a lot of people buy them for scrapbooking. So if you have wallpaper samples they should be made of the same materials. Penny Here is a link that might be useful: Wallies

My grandfather was a paper hanger. Which means my crafty grandmother had a constant source of supply of wallpaper. It was a given that any gift you got from her would be wrapped in wallpaper samples. She used WP for shelf liners, and all kinds of other things, too. It's just paper, after all (at least at that time it was--no 'pre-paste' on it to attract little nasties to live in the drawer with your undies--LOL)

I would focus on 3 colors predominantly- black for furniture and curtains (existing unless you’re looking to change window treatments too), warm gray for carpet, paint and background colors and gold for accents. I would pull the carpet color from the color of the leaves on the wall paper to tie it together. Same for paint. I’d take one of the colors you like from the paper and match it to paint. I would recommend pottery barn furniture in black - it will look much better than the mid tone gold wood pieces the previous owner had.