"But it looks the same as it did last week."

These aren't the most reassuring words but it is pretty much what my wife said after I spent 3 hours working on the plaster in the bedroom yesterday. She obviously forgot about all of the cracked walls and the places where the wall broke away from the ceiling when a PO installed new crown molding.
I refuse to get discouraged because I am pretty much finished with the woodwork and plastering on three sides of the bedroom. We also ordered a new fan from one of the online fan stores this week. I'll post more about the fan later. The bedroom is progressing slowly but it is progressing.
Since the plaster patching was going so well, I thought I would try and finish the stairway to the basement - a project that has been sitting half-finished for months. The walls in this area suck. The PO painted everything with a high-gloss paint (it appears this was done to inhibit mold growth) and then applied vinyl wall covering over it. I washed the walls about 8 times, with various solutions, but can't quite get the clean (notice the distinct tan-yellow color of the dried plaster/adhesive mixture). The plaster is sticking pretty well in the areas where holes have been punched - but there is a bit of cracking in the "smooth" areas. The finish in the stair is going to be a challenge but on some level, I don't really care what it ends up looking like as long as I can get it to look better than the "wet diaper" look it currently has.