Stone staircase - Refurb or not to refurb

[Claire]

We are currently refurbing my lovely family home ( 2 bedroom, small cottage).
The property was built as a chapel in 1723, but never used as one and split into 4 small cottages, mine being one of them.
The stair case is made of stone, but at 53 yrs of age, I've always known it to be carpeted.
Now that the house is a building site and all floor coverings removed, I'm loving the 300 years of wear on the stone steps, but they've been painted, glued and allsorts over the years and undecided whether to try and restore, or in fact where to even start. Second option, re carpet but it does seem a shame to cover the history - those stairs talk to me
Advice/suggestions very much appreciated

 

[DampedOut]

Loads of people have found awful, hard to remove junk on flagstones they discovered under carpet and managed to get it up and restore some beautiful looking floors. If you search for how to clean flag stones on this forum I think you may find some very good tips on how to refurb these. I haven't done this job yet myself.

I wouldn't call those tile/stone cleaner people. In the photos I see online, they seem to use diamond pads that remove the top layer of flagstones – including a lot of the undulations and character. If what you love is that character, I'd start with trying to refurb little spots yourself and see how it goes.