I painted our mantle piece / fire surround with Annie Sloane chalk paint a few years ago. It wasn't massively successful so now I'm redecorating the whole room I'm going to do a proper job, but I'll need to strip off the wax Any clue how best to do this? Thanks :)

Just found this. I am repainting my kitchen and have painted over quite a lot of what appeared to be old textured emulsion. But in the section I am doing now it has become clear that it's old, painted-over paper: this became apparent when I found some that was loose. I have removed the loose bits and I am not too bothered about the resulting unevenness as the whole wall is an uneven mixture anyway which gives a not unpleasing rustic look. My worry is that, while the paper that is left appears to be well stuck down, what came off did so with such ease that the remainder may be less secure than it appears. I have had problems over the years with several aspects of the house thanks to evident botches done by a previous owner: I fear this may be another. The top edge of the paper in your photographs looks very like the cut back edges of mine. Has yours remained sound since?

Thank you so much for all of your comments. OnePlan, you said what I fear (and what my mother would tell me!!) - the aesthetics of floorboards may be nice but the practicalities, not so much. I definitely think people are more likely to complain about being unable to sleep due to kitchen noise than the way a carpet looks!! I didn't know you could get a sound-reducing underlay so thank you for the suggestion, and to CreatePerfect for the link - that product looks great! Yes, I had thought that hard flooring would be easier to maintain as well as looking attractive (but perhaps that's more a case of new hardwood floors rather than existing floorboards??) Stephen, it's a good question. What concerns me is that in the sitting room (on the ground floor) I've discovered that the floorboards are the original Victorian ones and it looks like they stretch right across the house, under the internal walls, and I guess it'll be the same on the first floor. If so, presumably taking them up would involve sawing them at the walls, rather than just prising up, which would be very destructive... I could be wrong though, I've never done anything like this before and am learning as I go!!

Yes you can just paint over it. It’s very unusual to remove paint - would normally only be done on woodwork if it was in very bad condition or if you wanted to strip it back to the wood. Never known anyone to take paint off walls. If it’s very dark and you want a paler colour on top you may need 3 coats, depending on the brand of paint you use. Good luck!