UPDATED: Refinishing the coat hook rack.

Now that the side entrance foyer is looking good, I decided it was appropriate to start a new project.  I justified this by telling myself that this wasn't a huge project (ie kitchen remodel, roofing, etc).
I started with this:

I began by using the heat gun to remove the paint.  It appeared to only be 3 layers.  The top layer is the same tan latex as all of the trim in the house.  The bottom layer was shellac.  This is the first piece of wood I have attempted to strip that was originally shellacked instead of painted.  This made the heat gun/stripping process go MUCH faster.  I knew the wood was walnut since the backside is unpainted, but as you can see, it is turning out to be a beautiful piece.

1st pass with the heat gun done in 30 minutes.

After the heat gun, I manually scrapped the surface with my Bahco

 Here is a link to my favorite paint scrapper: Bahco 625 ~$18 @ Amazon

So far, I have only spent about 1.5 hours on this project.
As you can see I have some light colored paint in the pores of the wood.  As a next step, I plan to wipe it down with paint stripper and then lightly sand.  The finish I am planning to use is amber shellac.

What do you guys think?  I am pretty excited to see this thing hanging back up on the wall again.


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Saturday May 25th 2013:
Here are a few more "in-progress" pics.  Here is what the board looked like after cleaning it with paint stripper and finish sanding

And this next picture is after two coats of amber shellac.  This was exciting because it was my first time using shellac.  I bought it in flake form from Shellac.net

In total a have applied 4 thin coats of shellac.  I might put one more coat on, but it is basically done.  I now need to turn my attention to the hooks themselves...