Are We Crazy?

Before you say "yes" right off the bat, here's the real question: Are we crazy for wanting to re-texture the walls in our house before we paint? We hate the orange peel texture of our walls, and would love to take them from this:

Via

To this.

Via

But the desired texture (on the right) is tons of work. We first have to prime the walls so the mud will stick to them, then skim coat them (not sure how many coats), sand, and finally paint at least two coats. Sounds daunting to me. But then again, so does painting once, only to do all this work down the road.

Has anyone skim coated textured drywall before? Is it hard? I am dying to know what we are contemplating getting ourselves into here.