Stone Revival Help Needed

as some of you may know, brother and i have been gut-renovating an apartment for the better part of a year now, working mainly two to three nights a week and saturdays. we're almost done and after a lot of sweat, some sleepless nights and some blood too we're beginning to see an end result. all we're left with now is to finish compounding the walls, put up tile, paint and finally put the floors in. we also want to clean and re-install the old mantle around the fireplace in the bedroom, which is where we've hit a snag. firstly, we don't know what kind of stone it is. second, we don't want to ruin it by cleaning it the wrong way. anyone here know how to clean stone, or know someone who knows how? as you can see in the pictures there's about 6-years of old paint on it. once it's all done we want to re-install it on the fireplace in the bedroom but just don't know how to go about cleaning it. we've though of using a heat gun and tape knife, or chemical stripper. can anyone help? btw, we don't want to give this to someone to do. we'd rather do-it-ourselves, like the rest of the renovation...

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o.../DSC_2468a.jpg
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o.../DSC_2469a.jpg
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o.../DSC_2472a.jpg
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o.../DSC_2502a.jpg

That is marble, similar to what I know to be "Dark Emperador", but with yellow veining instead. I could be wrong on that. I'm sending the pic to some family members (I have family that works at a stone biz).

The safest and only thing that you should be cleaning stone with is an actual stone cleaner. DO NOT use chemical strippers or any other stuff like ammonia...that stuff can alter or stain the stone.

If you can't scrape it off with a knife or clean it away using a stone cleaner....then I'm sorry to say you might not be able to do much else with it.

Noir St. Laurent is the stone name.