I started prepping my walls for painting about a week ago. They are cracking in some spots, wrinkling in others, and some are just plain uneven from multiple layers of paint/patching compound. Most of the places where the paint is cracking is through all the layers of paint down to the plaster wall. So i've just been scraping those spots down to the plaster, filling with spackle and sanding. I've only come across a few spots where the plaster had gone bad and ended up scraping that down to the lathe and filling with some dry-mix patching compound and then spackling over that. In uneven spots where the paint isn't cracking I have been thinking about trying to sand it down. I have a random orbital sander. I haven't done it yet, will this work? I guess I am just wondering how am I suppose to get my walls to look smooth with all of these problems? My walls are white now and you can only see some of the imperfections when the light hits at a certain angle and others you can see no matter where the light is. I wanted to paint the walls a chocolate/bungundy color but now I am reading that dark colors are not good for walls with imperfections. I didn't anticipate having this many problems when I decided to repaint my apartment and now I am almost ready to just abandon the whole thing. Any help is greatly appreciated. One last question. What order should I be going in? tsp wash, scrape, fill, sand, tsp wash, prime, sand, paint? Should I spot prime all the places where I used spackle even though I am planning on priming the whole wall before I paint anyways?

I painted a toy chest for my daughter's 1st birthday and I used different kinds of paint for the scenes. I've used regular latex wall paint, acrylic art paint and then some all-purpose craft paint. There was no rhyme or reason to the paint I used, it was just what I had and the colors I needed. Now I am ready to put on a protective coating and my worst fear with this step is that I'll apply something that will wipe out portions of the scene. I've put too much time into it to ruin it at this point. Can anyone provide a proven coating that won't wipe out my decorative painting? Also, how many layers should I put on? Since my daughter is still so young, banging things is a favorite past time. The wood is kind of soft. Thanks in advance.