Cleaning up interior stonework

Chutzpah

Hi all,

We have an old house and some previous owners had some "interesting" ideas when it came to decorating.

One of the things they did was put some sort of dark stain/varnish on an interior stone wall in the living room. I quite like the stone wall being there as a touch of character, but not how dark it is.

What is the best way to clean it up? I'd prefer to try something non-hazardous first, then work my way up if need be - a friend of my suggested muriatic acid but a quick google of what it was (and a shaky memory of chemistry from my school days) made me very quickly realise that that wasn't what I wanted to use....

I've had a look around the net but most sites seems to be American, quoting US brand names that I can't actually work out what the base product is. YouTube just brings up a bunch of people using pressure washers on exterior walls.

Has anyone got any experience of doing this sort of thing?

nickj_2

trying to get paint off woodwork is hard enough so to remove it from stone wall would be even harder , if the stain is waer based it may come off with some hot water and a metal scourer , the only other thing i can think of is to get it sand blasted

thebaldwindowfitter

what about wire cup brush in a drill