My house has a funky 4-foot-wide room that used to be a porch back when Chester A. Arthur was in the White House. Other than insulating the rest of the house from the noise of drunken fistfights in the street when the local dive bar closes, it isn't a very useful room. It does get lots of light, however, so I've filled it completely with office plants left behind by laid-off coworkers during the decline-and-fall period of the dot-com boom. But something was missing... ah, yes, the Junkyard Touch™. I've got the '56 Chevy hood ornament on the wall, so it makes sense that I'd start grabbing icons dangling from the mirrors of junked cars and hang them from the light fixture. Am I the next Martha Stewart or what?

Send an email to Murilee Martin, the author of this post, at murilee@jalopnik.com.