RTFM
When we bought out first house, I got a hot air paint stripper from the hire shop to strip the paint off the internal doors. They'd been covered over with hardboard and painted - sacrilege!

Showing complete disdain for the heading, I plugged the thing in, and got started (having first ripped off the hardboard of course).

Now, academically, I knew it was going to get hot. Very hot. If I'd read the instructions and realised how hot, I could have avoided two tiny little problems.

A singed fringe (on my head!).

A burnt carpet.

I was waving the gun around trying not to burn the wood when I caught my hair in the blast. Thank goodness for 80s perms - the damage was largely hidden. The only reason on earth to be glad of a perm.

I also neglected to cover the carpet, not realising that the previous owner's nasty nylon carpet would melt when the hot paint I was scraping off landed on it.

I realised the carpet was beginning to burn after about five minutes. Still, a large glass of water took care of that!

That would have been a good one for the insurance company - we'd taken out cover the day before, but decided not to claim as a new carpet had already been ordered, and they'd only have shoved the next year's premiums up.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Thu 3 Apr 2008, 18:32, Reply)