Have U Read the Paper?

Ok, so I bought a house that was built in the early 1900's. I really love it, beautiful wood work, huge windows (even a stained glass one!). The rooms are really big and airy with 12 foot ceilings and the vibe here is just so peaceful. I am starting to research the history of the house, but have not had much luck yet. I decided my first project would be the "living room". Everyone told me that removing wallpaper was awful, but I was pretty determined. Well, it only took me about 1/2 hour of squirting downy water on my wall to run to my nearest Home Depot and buy a steamer. Once I had that cranking, I thought this wallpaper removal stuff was a piece of cake! It was pretty much melting off the wall! What were all these people complaining about???? I had about 7 or 8 layers on there and it was not bad....until....I started on the bottom half of my wall and something was different. The top was some flat blue-green surface underneath all the paper...ugly, but smooth and looked like a somewhat familiar wall surface. When I was steaming about 3 1/2 foot up from the floor, the surface underneath changed. There was a seam between the blue-green stuff and this new stuff that looked like cement! The bottom 1/3 of my wall was cement? And one wall is a totally different substance, all white and smoother than the cement, but more crumbly than the blueish stuff. There is also a barf-gold colored section around for about 1 1/2 foot around the top of the whole room! I believed that when the wallpaper came off, I would find a normal wall, something I would just prime and paint. I don't even know what these surfaces are, but you sure can't just prime them, No one warned me that under 3 layers of wallpaper there would be one layer of paint and a layer of newspaper then 3 more layers of wallpaper (but only on the bottom 1/3 of the wall, covering the cement!). I was trying to read the paper to see if I could find a date, or something to try and date it, but it was coming off in little pieces so no such luck, I know it must have been quite old because one piece I pulled off said "in the negro section". I would really like to rip the plaster down and just hang drywall, but some of the websites I found said that it is more costly and time consuming to do that. I just look at my ugly living room and want to cry! I bit off way more that I can chew. I was better off with the stupid butterfly and roses wallpaper! Some of the rooms are going to have to be re-done because they have some water damage from before the new shingles were put on. I guess I should start playing the lottery, but then again drywall is not that expensive. I should hit the library and study some DIY books....carpentry has never been my strong suit!