Easiest way to strip paint from mantlepiece

[ShelaghTurner]

It was painted white against my wishes and the job was pretty crazily done so it's started to scuff badly. As I want to paint walls white I want to strip paint and varnish instead. What's the best way of stripping it? It has two feeble coats of paint but needs a bit more than sanding.

*crappily done!

Heat gun?

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000489863

Heat guns can sometimes burn wood if you are not careful. I've used nitromorse which is very toxic so you need to wear gloves and be careful.

Thanks. I'll look into both.

Use a poultice stripper (google it) - nitromorse is useless these days since they banned the best active ingredient in it!

I did my bannisters and fireplaces (marble not wood) with poultice stripper - my only word of caution would be to not use too much water to rinse off as it causes the wood to crack/split open.