Site icon A Pretty Happy Home

Trash to Treasure: Art for Boys Room

I big fat love those HGTV shows where some clever person turns utter trash into something beautiful and useable.

This story isn’t quite that special and the storyteller isn’t nearly that clever.

However, I did climb over rusty gates wearing flip flops and wade through piles of junk in an old barn and even stopped alongside the road to find useable trash for my son’s room.

That should be worth some bonus points for completely free art, right?

What was my trashy treasure? Hubcaps!


The best I can tell from my 16 second search on eBay, these 3 hubcaps are from a Pontiac in the 1950s. I found them in the barn on our property.

I gave them a squirt with the water hose to clean off years of dirt and then hung them on the wall above my son’s bed.


I find the dings and dents in the hubcaps interesting. Did they come about while the car was in use or did they happen while being tossed around in storage over the decades?

And what in the world happened to the missing hubcaps? I have two of one design and one of another.


I also found two other hubcaps that someone had set on a roadside bench just down from our house. I drove past them for two weeks waiting for their owner’s to claim them.

Hey! Anybody missing a hubcap?

No one claimed them, so I figured I would get that trash off the road! I walked down there before the school bus came one day and snatched them up. I’m sure I looked funny walking down the road with these hubcaps, but I’m willing to sacrifice my dignity for free art. After I cleaned them up, they added to the theme going on in my son’s room.

These hubcaps are plastic, not metal like the ones from the 1950s, but I still think they look cool.


My son’s bed is a Pottery Barn knock-off that we made a year or so ago using Ana White plans.

If you’re curious about the bed, be sure and read my “one year later” post about this bed. You can learn from our successes and mistakes.

The curtains are duvet covers from Target from several years ago. The blue coverlet is also from Target, but I don’t think they make it any longer.

I’m happy with how my son’s room is coming together – especially with the trash to treasure hubcaps on the wall. Now I’d like to come up with an idea to incorporate some license plates I’ve been hoarding into his decor.


Thanks for being here today! If you have more time, try reading one of these posts next.

Trash to Treasure Mirror

Riveter Tool Turned Hanging Flower Basket Holder

Another Vegetable my Husband Hates

Our Best Hidden Storage Purchase – we used it on the bed in this post!


*affiliate links in this post*

Exit mobile version