Patching and Plastering - Cover old textured walls

Hi, I moved into a 60+ yr old home that has textured walls in the stairwell and hallway. It looks like some sort of textured paint was used (I'm not really familiar with faux finishes and all that), and then perhaps a course brush was used to create swirls in it. I really don't like it - it appears to have been patched poorly over the years so the texture is not uniform in places, and it just looks outdated in general. Since the house is quite old, I'm hesitant to try and sand the walls down, since there could be lead paint beneath (not sure how old the texture is). What can I do? I've thought about perhaps covering with an embossed wallpaper, or doing a new texture over the walls, but not sure if either of these options would work - it is quite a heavy texture. Any ideas?

since it's heavily textured, in order to hang paper, even the textured kind, you'll want to mostly fill it in by skim coating it with joint compound. then, depending on how hard you're willing to work at getting it smooth, you can either wallpaper over it with the textured & paintable type or just regular kind (or just paint the wall if you've gotten it really smooth).

I agree, no matter what type of finish/covering you wind up using on the walls it is nice to have a clean level wall to start with. Skim coating is not a difficult process although messy and hard on under used muscles.