Removing stone cladding

[Laugs]

Has anyone ever removed stone cladding from front of building themselves?

How difficult was it and did you find any horrors hidden beneath?

The rfront of our house is a seventies nightmare and we're considering getting the chisels out!

(Alternatively, any idea on costs/ success of getting a professional to do it?)

I hae heard, that it can damge the brick work underneath so be ery careful.

DONT!!!!!We bought a house like that and ended up costing a fortune to re reneder as the underneath was so damaged.It also caused damage around all the windows and was freezing afterwards in comparison.

Oh no! Noddyholder, did you get it professionally removed?

I can't stand the sight of our crappy yellow fake Cotswold stone in a street of red bricks any more!

Maybe painting is a better option?

When we first moved in we were so intent on the interior we just painted it off white and changed the front door to a nice plain one.But once the insdie was finished we got ambitious and got someone in to hack it off and underneath was a mess and took two plasterers to get it smooth £££££££££££ and still looked worse than the others in teh street!

Been there and done it and it cost a fortune !

If the rest of the redbrick houses in your street have good condition brickwork then it highly likely that yours did too until the stonecladding was applied so whoever put it on probably didn't do it as a cover up job.

However the removal process ALWAYS damages the brickwork underneath. There is no magic way of removing it without causing damage. You can I think sandblast the surface to make it look a bit less damaged but it still won't leave you with the same surface finish on your bricks as your neighbours.

If you might prefer a rendered finish however it is worth while removing the cladding and rendering over the brickwork. You can then choose the final paint colour for the rendered surface. Potential buyers generally HATE stonecladding, it devalues a house quite a bit because it is so costly to remove and leaves you with shabby damaged looking brickwork.