Forget flipping houses, this woman is flipping furniture – and raking in thousands.
With the cost of living still soaring, many Americans are seeking ways to make a quick buck to help make ends meet.
But Molly Harris, 32, (@flippedbymolly) has found profit in her passion – turning tired, discarded trash into another person’s treasure.
Harris, a mom of two, moved from Iowa with her family to a small island off the coast of Florida called Fernandina Beach last year when her husband got a new job.
Around three months ago she began restoring furniture neighbors had left on the side of the road and shows off the results to an avid following on social media.
Harris is no stranger to creative projects. In the past, she helped her husband conceptualize renovations for ‘fixer upper’ houses which they sold for a profit.
But despite having no prior experience with furniture flipping, she has now amassed nearly 28,000 followers on Instagram.
Speaking to DailyMail.com she said: ‘I started noticing so many people who put furniture on the curb and do an alert for maybe a broken bookshelf or an old dresser that needs updating. And I just kind of thought ‘I could work on that when I can”.
‘Nobody was depending on me to get back to them so I thought why not?’
She started with research, looking up furniture flipping tutorials online and trying out methods on her own pieces. And she hasn’t looked back since.
‘The hardest part was starting,’ she said. ‘But then I thought, ‘well, if I mess up, it’s just mine. But I was surprised at how you just figure it out along the way.’
‘You’re gonna have hiccups and things aren’t always going to go as expected, but that’s when I just go on YouTube and figure it out and before you know it you just flipped a piece of furniture that may be worth more now.’
Prior to flipping furniture, Harris owned an Etsy shop that sold nursery items, but said the demand and the tight deadlines left her in a time crunch.
‘I was answering messages at 9:30 at night when I’m trying to get to bed and, you know, there’s things going on at the post office, something arrived, damaged – it just was taking a big toll on me,’ she said.
‘Before we moved, I just decided I was going to temporarily shut it down and see how I felt after a couple of weeks. I just felt like I could kind of breathe again without having that constant communication with all of my customers ‘
Harris said that although she is not making as much money as she did with her Etsy shop (yet), her furniture flipping business is going in the right direction.
‘There’s good money to be made in furniture flipping and even more money to be made in content creation,’ she said. ‘My goal is to fully support my family within a year.’
Flipping furniture also allows her the flexibility to homeschool her two children.
Depending on the piece, she said flipping a piece can take anywhere from six hours to a week.
‘I’m really on my own schedule. If I have 30 minutes to work on it that day, then so be it. The goal I set for myself is one flip a week. If I can reach that, I’m happy.’
At present she makes an average of $500 per week – around $2,000 a month. In four months, she has flipped over 16 pieces of furniture.
‘The extra income helps us tremendously, she said. ‘Even if you didn’t want to produce social media content, I still think people should try it because what else can you do in your spare time that brings in two grand a month.
‘It’s such a great opportunity and a passion of mine. If I wasn’t furniture flipping now we wouldn’t be able to do as many things as we are right now.’
And this passion project turned side hustle isn’t expensive to start.
Some pieces she has salvaged for free from the side of the road, junk yards or online via sites such as Facebook Marketplace, while others she has paid a small sum for and then upcycled before selling for a profit.
‘You don’t need to buy super expensive supplies to do this,’ she said. She bought a sander, sprayer and a drill all for under $200 dollars.
The sander can be replaced by sand paper, and the sprayer can be replaced with a brush if you want to be even more cost effective.
While flipping furniture may seem intimidating, Harris said she believes anyone could do it.
‘I can’t stress enough that if you’ve been thinking about flipping furniture or have sat there feeling helpless because you don’t have any money to do anything extra and you’re just sitting there feeling the weight of the world, you can do this.’
Harris understands furniture flipping requires blood, sweat, tears, and some elbow grease, but claims the payoff (literally and figuratively speaking) is worth it.
‘I’m not gonna say it’s easy, but it’s also not extremely difficult either. And as long as you have the motivation and that hustle in you, you can do it and it will help,’ she said.
She said she has also found a community of people who are in a similar financial situation as her, and are taking up side hustles just to pay the bills.
‘I have had so many people reach out to me and tell me they’re in a similar position as me and they’re tired of living paycheck to paycheck,’ she said. ‘It was eye opening to see how many others felt the same way I did.’
While some furniture flippers ship their pieces, Harris is staying local for now.
All of her furniture is sold on Facebook marketplace. But you have to be quick because they often sell out in as little as an hour.
So what does the future hold for this furniture flipping aficionado?
‘One of my big goals is to flip a house on the island where we live and share the entire process with my followers,’ she said.