Painted over wall paper?

I need some suggestions here. I am working on an estimate for a kitchen. The existing walls in the kitchen were previously wallpapered and then painted over using latex. The problem here in lies.. The wallpaper was applied in strips and every seam is visible and 2-3 seams have split apart and cracked through the paint. The home owner had previously lifted some of the paper at a seam and it doesn't appear that the sheet rock was treated before the paper was applied. Now short of doing some demolition and re-dry-walling the entire kitchen what are my options? I'm pretty sure a steamer will destroy this the sheetrock as it is pushing sixty years old. I'm also not trying to score the paper and spray solution to spend 10 hours ripping off tiny pieces of paper because it didn't soak through the paint. I have also thought of just skim coating the entire wall with a spackle/joint compound or similar product but I'm not sure how long that will last before the paper lifts more and cracks the spackle and new paint. Any suggestions? If you have a technique you could share with a rough time-to-complete that would be great. As far as I can tell from first look only one wall will require this treatment, I would guess the dimensions at about 13' x 8' with a simple crown molding at the top, no chair rail and an electric baseboard heater at the bottom.