A dozen or more years ago, I found an old enamel sign, buried in the garden. It’d had a hard life and parts had rusted away. But it’s still a cool thing and would have originally been fixed to the front wall of the house, in the days of its life as a shop.

For a while, the sign was hung at the top of the stairs, but redecoration resulted in its retirement to a dusty corner.

However, As of today, it now sits proudly in the bathroom.

The sign originally advertised a daily newspaper, News Chronicle. This went bust in the 1930s, so the sign’s most likely from the early 1900s. Beamish museum has a more complete version.

I’d imagine that it was relegated to the garden in the early 60s, when the shop moved from its long time newsagent role to one of general dealer.

This afternoon, I removed some floorboards. Apparently, our boiler has an incorrect width gas pipe, which is unfortunately buried in concrete.

So, the new boiler requires a larger pipe and the easiest way to fit one is to follow a path from the front of the house, upstairs and through bedrooms, before returning through the kitchen ceiling at the back of the house.

In a bad situation, there’s often a positive. It was interesting to see that joists had been connected with pegged mortise and tenon joints.