I had a similar problem at my house. I gave up trying to do it myself and contacted a MD home improvement company. They used a technique called soda blasting to strip paint off of the bricks. It worked really great and they said it was an environmentally friendly method- which is great because I'm all about the going green! Hope that helps! Here is a link that might be useful: MD home improvement

I white-washed my red bricks about 25 years ago. Easy and I think it looks great. Still did when we moved out 4 years ago. I don't recall having to wipe anything off. I did most of it just during my kid's afternoon nap time. And my brick was about 6 feet wide, floor to ceiling, 9.5' ceilings. I just thinned white paint with water, sponged it on, and had plastic on my wood floors with towels layered on top to catch any run-off. If I recall correctly, there was a little but not much. The plastic without towels probably would have worked fine. I worked from top to bottom so I was able to quickly sponge any lines of paint that did stream down the brick. I'd say give it a try. If you don't like it but were going to paint the brick anyway, you can always paint over it. Personally, I hate the look of painted brick so I was a bit worried but hated the cheap brick (really Z-brick facing bricks) in my 1908 house with all the original, unpainted woodworking. It was a modernization attempt gone wrong. Might have worked better in a different style house. What I really liked about it is that the brick looked like real white brick when I was done, not like bricks that were painted. The paint was thinner in some areas than others so a little bit of the brick barely showed through but just looked like darker spots, not like red brick. It looked very natural. I received many compliments on it. Give it a try. You really have nothing to lose if you don't like your current brick.

Following ... I have a painted fireplace that I would love to restore to the original brick but the previous owners painted it. My GC warned me this is a nightmare. Wishing there was a product out there that could work. : *(

There are lots of articles online about the process. Here is a link to one posted by Bob Vila. https://www.bobvila.com/articles/how-to-remove-paint-from-brick/`