Secrets of the furniture flippers: how to turn trash into treasure

The Guardian

23-02-2025

A coffee table lies discarded on a grassy kerb. Thick black paint obscures how chipped and decrepit the wood underneath might be. Passing by, the best thing for it seems like the local tip. But along comes a young woman. She takes it and, with a healthy dose of sanding, stripping, wood-filling and revarnishing, turns what was a bit of street junk into a beautifully restored mid-century treasure. It's sold on for a healthy profit.
Welcome to the world of online furniture flipping – where interiors enthusiasts show how they have transformed pieces obtained for little or no money back to their original glory. Some are so good at it, they have quit their jobs to do it full-time.
Of course, doing up old furniture is nothing new – some trace the hobby back as far as ancient Egypt, and 90s and 00s DIY shows were full of questionable 'makeovers' of chests of drawers and wardrobes stripped and painted in garish colours. However, what is new is the booming business of building a social media following around it. On TikTok alone, a search for #furnitureflip pulls up nearly 800,000 posts, many with millions of views.
Part of the reason behind this is the meditative nature of the content – it's quite addictive to watch an electric sander smoothing out a sideboard or paint peeling off in satisfying curls to expose the grain of the wood underneath. There is also climate concern: according to a 2018/19 report by the North London Waste Authority, 22m pieces of furniture are discarded each year. Fewer than one in 10 people currently attempt to repair or restore broken furniture before chucking it out.
So, how easy is it to restore and flip furniture? And how can you do it with unloved pieces found around the house or picked up secondhand? Here, the experts of Instagram and TikTok reveal all.
One of Erin Shuford's projects
The videos that most fascinate Florida-based Erin Shuford's 1.6 million followers on Instagram are the ones of her stripping paint. 'It's an absolutely miserable process,' she says, but 'everyone loves to watch it.'
A recent find was a blue mid-century modern sideboard with 'Live, Love, Laugh' stencilled on it, for which she 'way overpaid' $80 (£63) on Facebook Marketplace. To remove the sickly hue, she started by using a nontoxic paint and varnish stripper. Then, she peeled off the paint in clean strokes with a metal scraper. For the more stubborn bits of paint, she used acetone and a wire bristle brush. After that, the table was sanded, a wood stain applied and it was toned. Then she sold it for $525 (£415).
Shuford is from a family of secondhand enthusiasts. 'From my grandparents to my mom, we would pick stuff from the trash and make it better. We still do to this day,' she says. 'Growing up, you don't have to buy new. You can always find something at a thrift store or a charity shop.' There's a sense of accomplishment, she says, in seeing 'a piece that was slathered in paint now showing a beautiful wood grain, restored and ready to live another 50 years'.
In 2021, after the birth of her first child, Shuford turned her hobby into something more. Back then, she had an administrative job in the construction industry. 'I went back to work when my daughter was just a couple of months old and I was really struggling,' she says. So she looked for ways that she could work from home. After fixing up a couple of pieces and selling them for a profit, 'I had a gut feeling that this is where I was supposed to be. So I quit my job on a whim.' She has learned everything she knows from 'YouTube university', but says the most important part is working out what customers actually want to buy. Her bestsellers are sideboards and nightstands, but she won't touch china cabinets – 'They are hard to work on, they are hard to transport, they are hard to store' – or dining sets, because the amount they sell for isn't worth the time it takes to restore them.
Shuford flips at least one piece of furniture a week, which she can sell for anything between $400 (£316) and $3,000 (£2,370). That $3,000 sale was a set of Broyhill Saga dressers bought for $250 (£198). She never dreamed that her account would become so popular but feels that if she can 'help other people do what I've been fortunate enough to do with myself and my business, then I'm absolutely going to do it'.
Iman and a converted dresser
It was during lockdown in 2020 that Faranne Iman spotted a solid wood dresser sitting by the bins outside her neighbour's home in St Louis, Missouri. She was too embarrassed to take it in the daylight – so she waited until dark and went back with a friend to collect it. She could tell the dresser was solid wood and in good condition, so all she had to do was clean it up. With a cheap paintbrush, she applied a new top coat of exterior paint (a rookie error: she now knows you should never use exterior paint on furniture). After listing the dresser on Facebook Marketplace, it sold for $400 (£316). 'I was like, that was too easy,' she says.
Since that first sale, Iman has built up more than 460,000 followers on TikTok, supplementing the income from her government job to support her 13-year-old son. 'When I first started, I was doing about 10 [flips] a month. But I wasn't putting the right amount of time and quality into pieces,' she says. Now, she has scaled back to four or five, but the price point has gone up. Last week, she sold a sideboard, which she got free on Facebook Marketplace, for a profit of $500 (£395). The lime green item didn't look like much to start with; scuffs, dents and a hacked paint job covered up its strong bones. Iman made the necessary repairs, before sanding and painting it. Then, to add extra height and give it a new look, she built a custom base. This cost about $40 (£32) but increased the sale value.
She is careful while working. 'I use respirators and protection whenever I can. The paints, the fumes, the sawdust … it's a lot of chemicals.' Although it is freezing cold in Missouri right now, she does the bulk of her DIY-ing outside.
'It's opened up windows and doors'
'It's therapy. It has been a great bonding experience for my son and me, and has allowed me flexibility to live a little bit differently' and with more financial freedom. For Iman, posting content online has 'opened up windows or doors … everything!' She collaborates with brands for free paint and equipment, or is paid to test products. Alongside the money that she earns for the flips and viral videos, she sells ebooks that teach people how to get started with restorations, and receives commissions from her Amazon storefront.
'This is clearly my thing,' she says. 'When I go into the garage, I have a speaker out there and it's just a space where I can be.'
The Furniture Dr with her burgundy behemoth
When Lilly Skjoldahl received a quote for a $10,000 (£7,900) dental bill in February 2022, she broke down in her car and cried. Then 25, she had been grinding her teeth at night, which had damaged her molars. She was in agony. But, as she had recently graduated in Florida and bought a house in Texas, there was no money left for treatment.
In the car, she opened Facebook Marketplace, where she had been hunting for cheap furniture to fill her new house, and saw an opportunity. 'That week, I picked up a nightstand, and ended up turning it into a liquor cabinet,' she says. 'I bought it for around $60 (£47) and sold it for $200 (£158). After buying the supplies and everything, it was only a $20 [£16] profit.' But she enjoyed it so much that she started flipping furniture in the evenings after days working full-time in public health.
'I'd come home from 5.30pm to 8pm and then work in the garage. I'd work Saturday, Sunday, all day – I sacrificed a lot.' After five months, however, she managed to pay off the dentist's bill, just from furniture flipping.
Skjoldahl collects mid-century modern furniture almost exclusively, which she finds in her remote area of Texas. 'I don't really have any competition,' she says. She sources it online, from estate sales and thrift stores, or left out in the street or in the rubbish.
Recently, she restored 'a freebie' she found on Facebook, a tall burgundy cabinet that she stripped, sanded, and stained sold for $500 (£395).
Her top tip is to be careful when manoeuvring furniture: 'Taking the drawers out before loading the dresser on to a van or into a trailer makes it significantly easier.' Like so much of the work, 'it's problem solving, just figuring out how to do things'.
Lauren Dastrup's ingenious nightstands
The secret of being a successful furniture flipper is looking beyond the superficial: whether chips in the veneer, missing hardware or a broken drawer – or past the dark, blurred photographs online. Others missed one of Lauren Dastrup's favourite finds on Facebook Marketplace: a broken Jacobean-style dressing table that was probably built in the late 19th century, which cost her $20 (£16).
Dastrup, who lives in Georgia, knew there was likely to be wood veneer under the black paint. She started by removing the damaged centre piece that connected the drawers, and turned them into nightstands. It took hours of chemical stripping to remove three layers of lead paint ('by far the most stubborn paint I have ever removed') until she found the walnut underneath. She then sanded them down, used a gel stain to bring out the wood's rich colour, sealed them for durability, and polished the original hardware. They sold in less than 24 hours for $500 (£395).
A lifetime of DIY …
Dastrup gravitates towards broken furniture, because 'I just crave novelty a little bit. It gets my brain going and I really enjoy it. There's a huge satisfaction for me. This was headed to the dump and now it can be used.'
She tries to keep the antique pieces she buys as close to the original aesthetic as possible. 'I'm sentimental,' she says. 'I feel that if I have a piece of furniture that has had these handles for 100 years, I don't want to take them away from it.'
Growing up, both her parents were into DIY: 'I watched them do it, so I never assumed I couldn't.' Turning a profit wasn't really the intention when Dastrup started selling her work, she says, but since inflation has risen in the US, she has realised it is a blessing to have the extra cash.
She's not surprised her DIY videos have taken off on social media, because she enjoys watching others flip furniture too. 'It's empowering,' she says. 'It makes you think you can do things, especially when you see people who are like, 'Hey, I've never done this thing before. Let's try it.' For me, that's very enticing.'
Bayliss and her renovated desk
Danielle Bayliss started restoring furniture full-time while she was on maternity leave with her second child. Although she was familiar with woodwork growing up – she remembers her dad making a wooden car and helping him to create a bird house – the first piece she worked on by herself was a dresser. It's still in her daughter's room today.
She picks up pieces on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, Gumtree and at auction houses near the Staffordshire town of Lichfield, where she lives. 'When you feel you've found a treasure, it is a really exciting moment,' she says.
She recently bought a desk on Facebook Marketplace for £10. She recognised it as a popular mid-century brand of furniture called Stag, and knew it would turn a profit after she had stripped the paint and varnish. 'I've never had paint peel off so satisfyingly. It revealed absolutely beautiful wood.' She cleaned off the residue using wire wool and white spirit, and used a hard wax finish to reveal and emphasise the wood grain underneath. It sold for £250.
'It's kind of horrifying how much gets thrown away,' Bayliss says of the culture that allows flippers like her to thrive. 'It's unbelievable really. And some of it is solid wood – you don't get furniture like that any more. It's got a long life left and it just doesn't quite fit in fashion or style.
'I have no doubt all these pieces that I'm stripping now will be painted again in 10 years' time,' she says. 'I think that's probably what I love about upcycling – that a piece of furniture is not just finished and how it's going to be for ever. It will change again.'