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I had seen a picture once of someone that hung a decklid up in their garage and it just looked like the coolest wall art that I could think of. My 1959 ragtop came with the perfect candidate, a ratty, rusty, bent, hammered and wrong-year decklid. I had my wall art.
The only problem was I don't own a garage. I do all my work in my yard and under my porch so if I wanted wall art, I needed to hang it up somewhere there were walls. Since the only walls I own are in the house my family shares with me, that's where I decided it needed to live. Now anyone that's married will understand that you can't just bring the hood to a car into your house and screw it to the wall (Well, unless you're a NASCAR fan. The rule doesn't seem to apply to them.) I needed to do something to make the fact that part of my car is hanging on the wall in our bedroom OK. My first thought was to simply clean it up, paint it and hang it in a place of honor above our bed. I was worried, however, that the fact that it was a superfluous piece of man-art would see it's removal and it's move to the wall in my closet, or perhaps the basement bathroom. It needed to serve a purpose.
Light. It needed to provide the gift of sight. And that's how the VW decklid wall sconce was born.
I spent less than $20 on it. I used some wire from some retired lamps (the IKEA lamp had a foot switch inline that is now hidden behind the headboard for switching duties). I bought two lamp sockets. A full sized socket for the top and a candelabra socket for the tag light. The top powers a 13w pocket CFL and the tag light is running a 15 watt stubby bulb. to run the electrical wire through metal panels(from top box to taglight and from taglight through bottom of decklid), I used some rubber grommets I had.
I built a box at the top to house the bulb, as I didn't want light leaking out between the decklid and wall. I used pieces of my old floorpans for that. For paint, I spent $7 for some Krylon cans at Wal-Mart.
I would just like to mention to anyone that's inclined to try it to:
1) Fasten the piece securely. Threaded anchors FTW!
2) Observe the polarity as you wire. Neutral is the wide prong, ribbed half of the wire and outer threaded portion of the socket. If you wire it backwards, you've got quite a fire/shock risk. Your wife will be very angry if the decklid falls on her while she's sleeping. She'll be even angrier if it electrocutes her in the process.
That's about the long and short of it. If you've got a spare decklid hanging around, why don't you put it to use?
