Back to it

I have finally (we found these 5-6 months ago now) sorted through all the old newspapers, cleaned them with a soft brush, flattened them out as best I can and put them into the archive file in date order. There is a load of historic wallpaper that we found too but they are in the drawers that are currently inaccessible as the oak doors are leaning up against them…

This is the earliest newspaper we found in the house, the Nuneaton Tribune was plastered into the wall around the old front door and is from October 16th, 1897!

“Don’t cough! Try Slinn’s Black Cherry Balsam. Gives relief in ten minutes.”

“Fennings’ Fever Cure – Bowel complaints cured with one dose, Typhus or low fever cured with two doses, Diptheria cured with three doses, Scarlet fever cured with four doses, Cholera cured with five doses, Influenza cured with six doses.”

Coronavirus cured with seven doses…??? If only!

Shopping by post, 1956 Farmers Weekly style…

Cat has started the clean up of all the timbers in Zanna’s bedroom. The old window seat gets cleaned with a combination of wiping down with a damp cloth (it cannot get too wet as it will not be good for the wood) and scrubbing with a wire brush to remove the plaster from the grain.

Cat has washed and brushed all the plaster from the timber and stone here (the strange niches in Zanna’s bedroom), but the edges also needed tidying up. Some of the tape was left under the plaster and needed tidying up at the edges very delicately with a sharp knife so it is no longer visible (the tape was bright green and bright orange).

The big beam in the wall is cleaned up and ready to oil.

The plaster is proving a little trickier to get off this as it is the end of a timber, the grainy end, perfectly illustrating the word ‘ingrained’…

Cat scrapes the plaster off the timbers in the other niche with a small knife.

This is one of the timbers in the wall halfway up the stairs that has yet to be cleaned, Cat is not looking forward to doing this, the older and rougher the timber is the harder it is to clean up.

The edge of the chimney breast in Zanna’s room. In fact the whole chimney needed cleaning as the stone was super dirty after all the building work that has gone on since this was soda blasted many months ago.

Henry hoover is going to be very busy over the next few weeks.