Furniture Flipper

You don’t need any formal credentials to get into furniture flipping. This hustle has no barrier to entry, and virtually anyone can give it a try.

However, to succeed, you’ll need the following skills:

• An eye for quality: When it comes to flipping any kind of product, the key is to find items that you can acquire cheaply (or for free) but that have potentially high resale values. To do this, you’ll need to understand the difference between genuine junk and high-quality pieces that just need a little love.
• DIY know-how: Again, flipping furniture often involves fixing it up. To excel, you’ll need to know how to sand down and refinish wood, replace old screws, apply new coats of paint, and perform other do-it-yourself tasks.
• Salesmanship: Finding and refurbishing furniture is only half the battle. You’ll also need to find interested buyers and sell it. Doing this will require sales and marketing skills, including the ability to take attractive photographs of your items and write compelling product descriptions.

Fortunately, you don’t need to have any of these skills right from the start. It’s fine to dive into this side hustle and pick them up as you go; just look up online tutorials and apply their lessons to your first few jobs.

Is flipping furniture physically demanding?

In addition to the skills listed above, you’ll also need a certain level of fitness to be able to work with (and transport) furniture. The larger the pieces you plan on flipping are, the more true this is. Dressers and bed frames are much harder to lift than stools and nightstands, and so on.

If you’re mobility-challenged or otherwise expect to struggle with the physical aspect of this side hustle, consider partnering with a friend or family member.

Where to learn to refurbish and sell furniture

There are more than a few ebooks and guides from furniture-flipping influencers that purport to teach you how to get into this side hustle. It’s your choice whether or not to get these; most of them aren’t free, and they aren’t absolutely necessary.

It’s possible to acquire the skills you need purely by browsing furniture restoration communities. Spend a while lurking in these subreddits:

• r/finishing
• r/Flipping
• r/FurnitureFlip
• r/furniturerestoration

Browsing them will give you an idea of where to find further (free) resources, such as YouTube creators who regularly post tutorials. (If you’re feeling overwhelmed, John’s Furniture Repair and Fixing Furniture are decent channels to start with.)

Spending a while soaking in the material in those channels and communities will give you a solid knowledge base. That said, to reiterate, there’s no need to spend months preparing before you begin; reselling used items is a relatively low-stakes gig, and many successful flippers acquired their skills on the job.

As long as you don’t try to refurbish very expensive and challenging pieces right from the get-go, you won’t lose much money, even if your first few projects don’t go quite as planned. You’ll learn a lot, and your only significant expense will be your time.

Required tools and supplies

Some furniture flippers spend a lot of time refurbishing the pieces they sell, whereas others focus on hunting down undervalued items that they can turn around with minimal work. It’s up to you to decide what approach you want to take. The former requires a lot of equipment, whereas the latter requires very little at all.

If you get deep into the DIY component of this side hustle, you may eventually need to acquire (and learn to use) all of the following supplies and tools:

• Vacuum cleaner
• Sponge
• Cleaning agents, including degreaser and upholstery/fabric cleaner
• Drill
• Screwdriver
• Sandpaper (various grits, from coarse to fine)
• Sanding block
• Orbital sander (optional)
• Heat gun (optional)
• Drop cloths to protect your floor (you can also use old sheets or newspapers)
• Safety gear, including goggles, gloves, and a reusable mask
• Paint stripper
• Brushes
• Primer
• Furniture paint
• Sealant
• Van or truck (for transportation)

Not every piece you work on will require all of this equipment. For instance, you may be able to turn a profit just by cleaning and selling used couches and mattresses, which won’t need any alterations at all.

However, if you have most of these tools (and the skills to use them) in your quiver, you’ll be able to flip a much wider range of furniture, and you’ll probably have more fun doing it, too.

The money you can make from flipping furniture is largely determined by two factors:

• Profit margins: This refers to how much you sell each piece of furniture for, minus your expenses (such as the cost of the furniture itself, your supplies, and shipping fees).
• Volume: This refers to how many pieces of furniture you flip per week or month.

This means that your potential earnings are highly variable. They depend on what type of furniture you specialize in, how much time you devote to this gig, and, to some extent, where you live (it will be much easier to source cheap items in cities with large markets for secondhand furniture).

With all that said, if you develop a thorough understanding of what types of furniture sell well and get good at restoring them, you can realistically earn $200–$500 per sale or even more.

Is it possible to turn flipping furniture into a full-time job?

If you’re able to complete 1–2 projects per week—which will probably be doable if you spend 10+ hours on this—and you sell them successfully, your income from flipping furniture part-time could exceed $1,000 per month.

If you reach that point, it’s valid to consider whether you want to turn flipping into your new career. Not all flippers dream of quitting their jobs and pursuing this on a full-time basis, but many do, and with enough dedication, it’s an attainable goal.

To make decent money from flipping, you need to look for secondhand items that are either being sold very cheaply or offered for free.

Fortunately, it’s possible to acquire a surprising array of furniture for almost nothing. Start your search in the following places:

Thrift stores

If your main exposure to flipping has been watching TikTok videos, you’ve probably seen your favorite influencers scouring local thrift shops for marked-down items. These scavenger hunts aren’t staged for social media; it really is possible to find steals at Goodwill and other, similar stores.

Set a budget ($25–$50 is fine when you’re just finding your feet) and make the rounds in a few different outlets. You might be surprised by what you turn up.

Garage and estate sales

You can also find furniture being sold at pop-up markets in your neighborhood, such as garage and estate sales.

These are less predictable—thrift stores are almost always open, whereas these appear irregularly—but if you live in a decent-sized residential community, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to find a few to hit up every weekend, particularly during the warmer months of the year.

The street (discarded furniture)

Sometimes, you’ll find furniture discarded on the street, either on the curb awaiting pick-up or in somebody’s dumpster. In either case, you can simply claim it for yourself (although if you go dumpster-diving, try to do it discreetly—some people find it off-putting).

Items that people have thrown away are sometimes in fairly rough shape, but that isn’t universally true. Often, people discard items in acceptable condition (or that have a few fixable defects) just because they don’t want to go to the trouble of reselling them.

If you acquire items this way, apply a little extra scrutiny to make sure they don’t have major issues that render them unsellable, such as termites in wooden dressers. This method of acquiring furniture can be a gamble, but it’s a great way to find hidden gems for absolutely no cost at all.

Community message boards

People often post ads for furniture they don’t want anymore on local message boards. In particular, keep your eye on:

• Craigslist
• Nextdoor
• Local buy-and-sell groups on Facebook

If you live in a town with a college or university, the beginning of summer is a particularly good time to keep tabs on these platforms. Many students may be moving away and will need to offload the furniture they used in their dorms or college apartments, even if there’s nothing wrong with it.

Sometimes, you may need to buy the items you want. Other times, people will just want them off their hands and will give them to you for no cost as long as you’re willing to swing by and pick them up.

Online furniture marketplaces

Last but not least, you can also source items online. There are more than a few websites and apps where people sell old furniture, including:

• AptDeco
• eBay
• OfferUp

Buying furniture online poses different challenges than finding it in person. You can’t examine items as thoroughly before purchasing them, and you have to make yourself available when they’re due to be delivered.

On the other hand, shopping online also comes with a lot of advantages. Chief among them is that it enables you to hunt down exactly what you want to flip. You don’t have to rely on what you happen to find in thrift stores and other places in your community.

There’s no one way to fix up a piece of furniture; the process you should follow depends on what it is and what condition it’s in. Below, we’ve outlined two common methods of touching up items for resale:

Cleaning upholstered items

As mentioned, many people sell (or simply dump) mattresses and couches that have been lightly used and can be resold with nothing more than a cleaning. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Vacuum the item

The first step is to go over the entire item with a vacuum cleaner, removing dust, pet hair, and other caked-in dirt. Use an upholstery attachment to dislodge as much lint and other debris as possible.

2. Apply bug spray

This step is optional, but you should perform it if you think there’s any chance the item is infested with bed bugs or other creepy crawlers. Apply a store-bought bug spray to the entire upholstered surface, then let the item sit for 24 hours.

If you take this step, do it before bringing the furniture into your house. If the weather in your area isn’t nice enough to leave it outside, you can put it in a garage, shed, or another workstation that’s separate from your actual home.

3. Spot clean any obvious stains

Next, mix a cleaning solution and apply it with a damp cloth to any spots or stains. The classic mixture for removing fabric stains is:

• 2½ cups of warm water
• ¼ cup of cleaning vinegar
• A tablespoon of dish soap

Once you’re done, rinse out the cloth and go over the spots again to blot up the cleaning solution.

4. Use baking soda as a deodorizer

Lastly, sprinkle baking soda all over the item and let it sit for at least 12 hours. This will act as a deodorizer. It won’t be enough to rid the furniture of truly stubborn scents, such as cat urine, but it will be enough to cleanse it of most smells that come from everyday use.

Once you’ve completed this step, perform another pass with a vacuum cleaner to get rid of the baking soda, and you’ll be done.

Refinishing wooden furniture

Some of the most profitable pieces of furniture to flip are vintage wooden items with peeling or chipped paint. You can boost the value of these considerably by refinishing them, although the process is more intensive than cleaning upholstery.

Follow these steps:

1. Clean the item

Before restoring any wooden piece, lightly go over it with a sponge or rag to remove dirt and grease. You don’t need to give it a deep clean—in the next step, you’ll hit it with strong chemicals, which themselves will need to be cleaned eventually. Just give the piece a once-over, then let it dry.

2. Strip the item’s finish

The next step is to apply a paint stripper to the item to weaken the old finish. Let it sit for a few minutes, but not so long that the chemical dries (check the bottle or can to see how long the manufacturer recommends).

Once the paint stripper has had time to do its work, use a putty knife to scrape off the furniture’s finish. Optionally, you can also use a heat gun to further soften it.

Some of it will probably remain after this step—that’s unavoidable. Just remove as much as you can. Once you’re done, follow the manufacturer’s instructions to clean the paint stripper. It might be enough to rinse the item with water, but you might also need to apply a particular type of solvent, such as turpentine.

Important note: Any time you use strong chemicals, wear a mask, and do your work in a well-ventilated area. If at all possible, perform this step outdoors.

3. Sand down the item

Because you probably won’t get all of the item’s previous coat off with the chemical stripper, you’ll also need to work it over with sandpaper (and potentially other tools, such as a sanding block).

You might need to perform multiple passes. Start with a coarse grit and work your way to a finer one, and wipe down the item between each pass to remove any debris.

4. Apply a new coat of paint or wood stain

Next comes the fun part: actually refinishing the piece. Your options here are nearly limitless, and exploring all of them is well outside the scope of this guide, but your first and most important choice is between:

• Staining: This will allow the piece’s original material to show through. It’s a good option if your piece is made of solid wood (as opposed to manufactured wood) and it’s in decent enough condition that you want its grain and other aesthetic traits to take front and center.
• Painting: If you want to put your own spin on the piece, you can also apply a coating of paint that will wholly cover up the wood. This is a better option if you have a clear vision for its colors and design, or if the item’s in rough enough shape that you need to cover up its original surface for it to be sellable.

There’s no right or wrong answer here; it depends on the needs of the piece and the personal style you want to cultivate. Whatever you choose, go over the piece with a brush as many times as you need for it to achieve your desired look.

5. Apply sealant or a topcoat

The last step is to seal in your paint or stain with a top coat, such as:

• Wax: Many people like the look of wax finishes on stained wood pieces. This isn’t the most durable option, so it’s a good choice if you don’t expect the item to see particularly heavy use.
• Polyurethane: This type of coating can be either oil- or water-based. It’s very durable, although it tends to cause a certain amount of discoloration, so avoid it if your piece has a lot of subtle colors that you don’t want to get lost.
• Polycrylic: This type of water-based sealant is less delicate than wax and causes less yellowing than polyurethane, although some woodworkers find that with multiple coatings, it can create a cloudy or “milky” look. It also doesn’t handle heat well, which means it isn’t suitable for items that will be stored in sweltering attics.

If you choose a water-based product, make sure not to apply it immediately after treating your piece with an oil-based product (such as a gel stain). It’s fine to use both products; just give the oil-based treatment time to cure (dry) first.

Here again, many sealants give off noxious fumes (particularly polyurethane), so be sure to work over your item in a well-ventilated area.

Once you’ve touched up a piece of furniture, the only thing remaining is to actually sell it. There are two paths you can take:

Flipping furniture online

There are dozens of platforms that you can use to sell furniture online. In fact, they largely overlap with the ones that you can use to source cheap furniture for resale, which we mentioned above.

Look into the following sites and apps:

• AptDeco
• eBay
• eBid
• Etsy
• Craigslist
• Facebook Marketplace
• Nextdoor
• OfferUp
• Ruby Lane

You can use most of these apps to sell to people all over the country, although a few (such as Craigslist and Nextdoor) are predominantly used for local sales. Review each site’s terms of service thoroughly before you commit, and make sure you understand the listing, selling, and shipping fees you’ll have to pay.

If you’re technically inclined, you can also create your own online store using a platform like Shopify. This is more work, and you’ll have to advertise your shop more heavily because your items won’t appear in the search results on sites like eBay, but it gives you more control over your branding. It’s a good choice if you see furniture flipping as a potential new career, not just as a small-time side hustle.

Flipping furniture in person

If you’re not sold on any of the platforms listed above (or if you just aren’t a big fan of e-commerce), you can also sell your furniture in person. It’s possible to do this at:

• Flea markets: If there are any of these in your city, you can look into acquiring a booth and selling your creations there. You’ll probably have to pay for your space, but on the plus side, you’ll receive a steady flow of interested customers each week.
• Local shops: If there are any vintage or antique stores near you, they might be willing to sell your items for you in exchange for a cut of the profits. This is more likely for independently owned outlets rather than large chains. Put out feelers and see if any store proprietors in your area are willing to cut a deal like this.

If you decide to sell locally, be sure to advertise! Post about your creations on Facebook, and ask your friends and family to put the word out there. Again, being great at restoring furniture is only half the battle with this side hustle; to actually earn money from it, you need to attract interested buyers.