Hacked Off - Stripping Walls to Bare Stone and Brick

A couple of weeks ago (actually it was before Christmas... I'm a bit behind on my write-ups) We decided that the first thing to do in the lobby was to strip the walls back to the bare brick and stone.

We started with partially plastered/wallpapered/painted walls that were nothing short of an eye-sore

We wanted to take the plaster off because (a) Plastering to a smooth finish is really difficult, (b) we didn't want to lose any space by battoning and boarding, and (c) we really like rough lime-washed walls.

We have used this to great effect in both our living room and in Teeny's bedroom. Here is a photo of how the brick-work in Teeny's room came up, it is really beautiful and tactile, though it is taking a lot of vision to imagine it in the lobby.

Clearly the madness of having 35 Christmas dinners to cook was not enough drama for us so a few weeks before Xmas we hired a chipping hammer. We've been hiring all our heavy machinery from HSS and we have had brilliant service from them.

John had the unenviable task of whacking all the plaster off the wall and it was remarkably quick and unbelievably messy. The dust got everywhere in the house, despite taping up doors and keeping the hall well ventilated. To add to the joy, our hoover (vacuum) broke during the clean up... luckily it was under warranty and we had it replaced 3 days before Christmas... phew!

We discovered the wall on the right is beautiful stonework. The wall on the left is brick and caused us some problems.

Everything below 4ft was plastered in really tough cement which we couldn't get off... 1 metre of it it is already gone(done when rising damp was treated) so that leaves us with about 1 ft of cement plaster in a band half way up the wall that won't budge.

My current plan is to tidy up the top edge to blend it into the rest of the wall. Below we'll mount some storage which should disguise the lower edge.

Anyone got any other suggestions, I'd love to hear!