How to make £1,000 per month flipping furniture

Recently, I accidentally stumbled across Furniture Flipping Teacher on Youtube, and I have to admit – I’m completely hooked.

The Furniture Flipping Teacher is the most adorable American kindergarten teacher called Lauren, who makes a side income by flipping furniture, in order to pay off her student loan debt.

In some of her videos, she runs through the entire month of furniture flips, explaining how much she paid for each one, what she did to them, and how much she eventually sold them for. And therefore, how much she was able to pay off her student loan debt. It is the most satisfying thing.

It made me want to move back to the UK and set up a little workshop in the bottom of my Mum’s garden and be OOO until further notice.

As you’ll see if you watch any of her recent videos, her ‘side’ income earned through flipping furniture and making Youtube videos soon took over her teaching wage, and she now is able to do furniture refurbs full time! Which just makes me so happy, because she’s just so lovely. She also managed to pay off her full student loan debt in April this year. Good things happening to good people – I love it.

I realise the headline is a bit clickbaity, but if you watch Lauren’s videos you’ll soon understand how to make £1,000 flipping furniture.

The way I see it, is if you aim to flip one piece of furniture per week, and sell for £250-£300 per piece, you’ll have hit the £grand mark!

How to plan your furniture flipping side hustle…

Look for cheap pieces to flip – Obviously, the cheaper you can find a piece of furniture to flip, the more money you’ll make. Facebook Marketplace seems to be the place to look, but charity shops and flee markets are also treasure chests in their own right. On Facebook Marketplace, you can often find people literally giving away furniture for free, as long as you can collect it quickly! If you don’t have a big car with a boot big enough, you could always hire or borrow a van for a day, arrange to collect your whole month’s worth of pieces and then do them throughout the month. Or, you could start small, with bedside tables, smaller coffee tables, and other furniture that fits in the boot!
Do your research – Look into current interior trends, and what all the other popular retailers are stocking at the moment. If you can spot a trend or colour that’s going to be popular, you can use this to hopefully attract more customers. Check out Rose & Grey or Rockett St George for inspo on how to renovate and style.
Carry out the work to a high quality – I’m talking sanding, painting, varnishing – the lot. If you don’t know what you’re doing, there are loads of Youtube videos you can watch to learn the basics.
Dress and style the piece when it’s complete, ready take high quality photos – When Lauren’s finished with a piece, she styles it ready to take her photos, to help people visualise it in their homes. Check out her Instagram to see loads of examples!
List it on Facebook Marketplace – So you can advertise it to people local to you, chuck up a listing on Facebook Marketplace and let the internet work it’s magic. You might need to lower the price if you’ve had no interest at all in over a week, but if you’ve got room to store it you could always wait it out a little longer!

I love how inspiring the videos are, as they show how achievable it is to earn a side income by doing this.

Don’t get me wrong – Lauren’s got serious skill. There’s no way I could do many of the things she does, and she knows so much about sanding and painting and all sorts of woodworking skills that I don’t expect you just learn overnight. However, Lauren also has a number of videos that teach the skills required to do furniture flipping, with loads of tips and tricks for getting a good finish.

This would be such a fun project to do with friends over summer or something, or to save for something specific. Like a holiday, a new car, a house deposit?! Whatever you’re aiming for.

Lauren currently has 77.2k subscribers on Youtube at the time of writing this, and this will no doubt continue to grow as she continues to make videos and her audience multiplies. This means she’ll also be earning a generous amount from Youtube Ads per month.

Bit tricky for me at the moment because I’m based in Sydney, and I always try not to build up too much inventory for the upcoming relocation back to the UK (too much faff trying to move your whole life from country to country as it is, tbh), but when I’m Bristol-bound again I am DEFINITELY going to buy some cheap furniture and attempt to flip it.

Geppetto, they’ll call me.

Hope you found this interesting. Go and give Lauren a follow on Instagram and subscribe to her Youtube channel if you like this sort of thing. And if you give it a go, tag us on Instagram so we can share!

P x