Tips for stripping slate fireplace?

[PeachPlumPears]

I have a Victorian fireplace that is slate underneath but has been painted in marble effect.

Any advice on what to use to strip off the marble effect layer without damaging the slate?

Or could I just paint over the top?

The insert is cast iron, and in good condition so I don't need to do anything with that, it's just the surround I would like to be plain black as not a fan of marble (real or painted!).

My husband is a stonemason he says rubbing it down would be the least likely way to damage the slate underneath. I guess it depends on the thickness of the paint though. Might be a bit of a laborious task!

Thanks Janice and husband!

Do you think a chemical stripper is a bad idea then? Or a heat gun?

Rubbing it down does sound laborious and we're quite short on time too 🤔

Ive stripped a slate fireplace before using nitromors gel. Are you sure you want to remove the marbleing as if its done well i quite like it?

It is done well (fooled me anyway 😂), so I feel quite bad about stripping it, but I much prefer plain black slate to marble effect. There are a few of them, so I was planning to strip one for now and see if I could grow used to the other ones 😂

I had slate fire surround which had been painted on, and we did a combination of scraping it off using brute force and sanding it off after. You can sand it down quite well with fine sandpaper, so maybe nitromors would be OK and then a sand job after. But google it first!

We used ' peelaway' to strip our slate fireplaces. Messy but worked a treat.

I used Nitromors on mine to lift some sort of black gloss paint on top of lovely slate. Dirty, messy job but good results

Thanks everyone! We just used non-branded paint stripper and it worked brilliantly! Just need to put some slate oil on them now to darken them up again