Creating an exposed stone wall, advice please?

[cushionfiend]

Hello - we're buying a red sandstone cottage and thinking of exposing the stone on one internal wall. This will involve removing plaster and cleaning up the stone to create a nice finish. Anyone done this and have experience to share? Thank you.

you don't mind the wall, and the room, getting cold and damp, do you?

We paid a builder to do this to a chimney breast. However will be doing the same ourselves in another room. It's v v messy & hard graft to get the plaster off, it then has to be repointed (a more skilful job than you might think!) & then the bricks were painted with an acid/brightener? To bring up the colour. Finally they are sealed. The finished effect is really striking. We have never had any issues with cold/damp however this could be because it is on the internal chimney breast wall.

I gadget an exposed brick wall once. Looked lovely. Don't forget you won't be able to gave any stickers etc on that wall, pictures will be tricky to hang. No shelves. And v dusty!

? Gadget?

if it's an internal stone wall it would probably work well.
An outside wall would still look nice but removing the plaster/lathe (and cavity behind it) will reduce the thermal efficiency of the wall.
check the quality of the stone before stripping the entire wall - it isn't always pretty.
consider electrical wiring and heating pipes - if they run across the wall to be exposed they will need to be re-routed or contained.

Oh yes, very good point about inside face not being pretty.

As it was intended to be plastered and never seen, internal walls were often built by the lad, using defective and broken bricks or stone. Some stone walls have an attractive coursed outer face but the inside and any filling may be rubble.

Thanks to all that have replied - some really useful points here. It's an internal wall adjoining the cottage next door, and has a fireplace in it with a multi-fuel stove so that will hopefully help to keep it from being damp. Sounds like we should do a test patch first to see how the land lies, so to speak. Cheers!