The technique that he proposed was to sand down the "stomped peaks" (but not completely flat) and skim coat the entire thing with drywall paste. 

I was going to try n let them stay but as many have said I have already allowed too many things to go without taking action and I just need to get thicker skin n go for it.

The only exception was that I did once pay a mentor for his time, but only because he was local and active, and because he made it clear what his time was worth, and was straightforward that he was not promising that I would even want to do real estate or that he was going to sugar coat it, and only because he made it clear that we *were going to do a deal together* so long as I followed his instructions and did the work.

I had the entire floors sanded, sealed, and multi-coat polyurethane, and that combined with new paint top to bottom (these were concrete, not drywall, walls) sealed the smell, and that was several years ago with no return. 

What I have heard so far is that I could insulate in between the floor joists and use a thicker underlayment underneath laminate flooring in order to achieve noise reduction from above.

I did a few extra coats to be safe.

Ceiling tiles, you could paint the black tiles, but white over black will take at least two coats of stain blocking primer plus finish coat.

I live what I do and have been doing it for over 25 years, but there are THOSE days when you just can't be "beige" and sugar coat it.

I suggest that if you are rehabbing an older home with plaster walls stay away from them if there were extensive wall paper covering unless you are ready to rip the plaster down and do drywall or you can rip the paper down and texture because I have found that back in the day most people did not use sizing and the paper destroys the finish and skim coating is mucho dinero.

yes, it could use a coat of paint, lolI don't care that much about the insurance company paying for the structure if it gets damaged in a storm.