My new loft apartment has 17-foot ceilings and huge windows. Of course this makes me very happy, but it also has a troubling side-effect: about 16,000 square feet of empty wall space.

Earlier today I was worrying about how my roommates and I would fill this tremendous void when we move in later this summer. (My life is filled with many such troubling issues. I have just learned to be strong, I guess.) I first thought of movie posters, but after some calculations, realized I would need a poster from every movie made since 1991 to cover any significant portion of these walls.

Besides, posters are for junky dorm rooms, not loft apartments. My new roommates and I have moved up in the world, and our apartment needs to reflect that. We need something a little more classy.

Immediately, I thought of old metal signs. Maybe not the classiest solution I admit, but they do have character. Plus it seemed to fit the whole old industrial loft motif.

I proceeded to spend my entire afternoon searching for metal signs on EBay. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of old tin signs available. Most of them were priced reasonably at around $8 to $10. Eventually I had placed bids on two old pieces of metal: a sign featuring the Three Stooges golfing and a very patriotic Campbell's Soup sign.

These two small signs won't cover much wall space, but I had to start somewhere. And maybe they don't have much class, but they do have a lot of character. Leave a comment and let me know if you approve or disapprove of my selections.

This is not the end of the story, but it's all I have the patience to write down tonight.