I removed all of the wallpaper from my house and attempted to smooth out the wall. I found I'm not good at smoothing walls either so I gave up. Instead, I bought some orange peel spray texture in a can for the walls. It worked pretty good. I went over the walls with a light hand and then let it dry. I took a couple of more passes until I had a decent looking texture. You may not want a textured wall, but I thought I throw it out there as another option.

I appreciate your thought. I am in the process of preparing walls, I've pretty much done dumb (ignorant) things while attempting to do it myself. I've just applied some GARDZ to see how this works on a portion of the wall. So - uh - I don't WANT textured walls (or textured paint, for that matter), but methinks I'm going to have to do with them. I like the sponge effect and have been looking into that, but I need to look into the orange peel spray texture type thing, too. Do you first apply it and then paint over it?

I have the Homex Orange Peel Texture Spray. It says to Prime/seal area before and after applying texture. Then you paint.