Interior stone wall DIY

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Hi
Would love some advice on a DIY project I've dived into that's now keeping me up at night.

We've got a cool 1970's Mid Century style house here in NZ and have always wanted to cover an internal cinder block wall in our lounge with stone. Think ya Palm Springs, 60's styled Hollywood style. Managed to score some stone from a mason for crazy cheap and in the weekend have fool-hardly started installing the stone. The wall is completely internal with no sides exposed to the exterior so there's no issue with water getting anywhere near it.

Having watched countless youtube videos of similar style projects I felt reasonably confident enough that I could do the job.

Where the issue is, is that the cinder block wall we have has been painted. Spoke to a couple of tradesman and a bloke from a NZ building merchant and they said if the paint job is solid and not completely smooth then modern day glue like Liquid Nails Extreme strength will be fine for the job. Says on the package that this glue is fine for any masonry or concrete work.

I understand stuff like this is quite a debatable topic with traditionalists preferring the mortar route vs modern day glues being so much superior than they used to be and make for a cleaner and easier job.

Well like a bull in a china shop, that was enough for me to get started however, I've now found out from further research that I should have stripped the paint from the wall to expose the cinder block.

Im about a quarter of the way through the job and all of the stones that I have installed are as solid as anything. Been over 48 hours now and have used my full strength to try and pry them off and there is absolutely no budging them. In my head, once I grouted between the stones that would then add another layer of adhesion as well.

Questions that I'm now replaying over and over in my head are...

1. Am I running a risk of the stones eventually coming away from the paint? And falling off and landing on someone!?!
2. Should I strip the paint from the rest of the wall, exposing the cinder blocks that dont have stone on them and from there its all plain sailing?
3. Have I really stuffed up and do I need to start from scratch. Somehow pull the stones that have been laid, strip the wall and apologise to the wife for being too eager to do the job?

The stones are a limestone and have been cut with back face dead smooth. Couldn't tell ya the individual weights but the maximum depth on some of them would be 30-40mm. Have been applying liberal amounts of glue, pushing them in place, removing them for a couple of minutes and then re-applying them back on the wall.

Didn't do a full bottom course as needed to come up with a plan for how they connect with the floor. Carpet will be one day be replaced with flooring so didnt wanna go to carpet. Easy to find and/or cut the right pieces to for the bottom course.


This is turning into quite the essay. Will leave it there but any tips would be hugely appreciated.