Ahern was making an annual $35,000 doing Our Boarding House for Newspaper Enterprise Association when King Features Syndicate offered to double that figure. Leaving NEA in March 1936 for King Features, Ahern created Room and Board which had more than a few parallels with Our Boarding House. Debuting June 21, 1936, it revived the title of an earlier Room and Board strip, drawn by Sals Bostwick, which ran from 1928 to 1931, distributed by the King Features subsidiary, Central Press Association (best known for launching Brick Bradford). However, Ahern's Room and Board had no connection with Bostwick's strip other than the similar title.