It was a Saturday afternoon when Lynn Edmundson met her then husband in the driveway of their home in Houston, Texas: he was just coming home from work as a doctor. “I said he couldn’t park in the garage because there was a fully deconstructed 1930s bungalow inside,” she recalls. That moment was a tipping point for architect Edmundson (and doubtless, her bemused spouse): she had to find a way to salvage her home from all the salvage.

Her solution was to open a scrapyard where it could be sold. The first one, in 2004, occupied just 800 sq ft, but two decades later, the yard has moved to take up around half of a 45,000 sq ft warehouse, with more space outdoors. Edmundson says that the architectural treasures there are priced about 20-50 per cent below market value on average, with particular bargains on items such as high-end custom-made cabinetry, which often costs 75-80 per cent what it would at a conventional store.

This is no ordinary junkyard. Edmundson prices them to move because the profits from this architectural Steptoe and Son are ploughed straight back into the community — specifically, underwriting her work running a charity that aims to preserve Houston’s best buildings, Historic Houston.