Mary Jo - We've recently had to do this same thing...remove wallpaper when it had been directly applied to the drywall. We used a steamer and removed as much as possible, spackled "heavily" and then sanded everything flat and smooth. TExtured, painted with primer and two coats of paint later it looks pretty good. We do, however, want to see if we can paint over our next area instead of going to all this trouble...there seem to be varied opinions on that.