Forget flipping houses, this woman is flipping furniture and raking in thousands.
As the cost of living continues to rise, many Americans are looking for ways to make quick money to make ends meet.
But Molly Harris, 32, (@flippedbymolly) has found benefit in his passion: turning tired, discarded trash into someone else’s treasure.
Harris, a mother 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.
About three months ago he began restoring furniture that neighbors had left on the side of the road and shows the results to his avid followers on social media.
Forget flipping houses, Molly Harris is flipping furniture and making thousands doing it
Harris, a mother 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. About three months ago she began restoring furniture that neighbors had left on the side of the road and she shows off her results to her avid followers on social media.
Harris is no stranger to creative projects. In the past, she helped her husband conceptualize “fixer-upper” home renovations that she sold for a profit.
But despite having no prior experience flipping furniture, she has now amassed almost 28,000 followers on Instagram.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, he said: “I started to notice a lot of people placing furniture on the pavement and alerting them to a broken bookshelf or an old chest of drawers that needed updating.” And I thought, “I might work on that when I can.”
“No one was depending on me to get back to them, so I thought why not?”
She started doing research, searching for tutorials on how to flip furniture online and trying methods on her own pieces. And since then she hasn’t looked back.
“The hardest part was getting started,” he said. “But then I thought, ‘Well, if I’m wrong, it’s just me.'” But I was surprised how you realize it along the way.
“You’re going to have setbacks and things aren’t always going to go the way you expected, but that’s when I go on YouTube and find out and before you know it, you’ve just overturned a piece of furniture that may now be worth more.” ‘
Pictured: A dresser Harris bought for $50 and sold for $550.
Before refurbishing, Harris owned an Etsy store selling nursery supplies, but she said demand and tight deadlines left her short on time.
“I was answering messages at 9:30 at night when I was trying to go to bed and, you know, things were happening at the post office, something arrived damaged, it was just taking a toll on me.” she said.
‘Before we moved in, I decided to close it temporarily and see how I felt after a couple of weeks. I felt like I could breathe again without having that constant communication with all my clients.
Harris said that although he’s not making as much money as he is with his Etsy store (yet), his furniture flipping business is going in the right direction.
“You can make a lot of money flipping furniture and even more money creating content,” he said. “My goal is to fully support my family within a year.”
Flipping furniture also allows you the flexibility to homeschool your two children.
Depending on the piece, he said turning 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, so be it. The goal I set for myself is one spin a week. If I can achieve that, I’m happy.”
Pictured: A dresser Harris bought for $50 and sold for $625.
He currently earns an average of $500 a week, about $2,000 a month. In four months she has overturned 16 pieces of furniture.
“The additional income helps us enormously,” he said. ‘Even if you didn’t want to produce content for social media, I still think people should try it because what else can you do in your free time to make two thousand dollars a month?
‘It is a great opportunity and one of my passions. If I wasn’t flipping furniture now, we wouldn’t be able to do as many things as we do now.’
And this passion project-turned-side hustle isn’t expensive to start.
Some pieces he has recovered for free on the side of the road, in junkyards or online through sites like Facebook Marketplace, while for others he paid a small sum and then recycled them before selling them for a profit.
“You don’t have to buy very expensive supplies to do this,” he said. He bought a sander, a sprayer and a drill, all for less than $200.
Pictured: A dresser Harris bought for $60 and sold for $400.
The sander can be replaced with sandpaper 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 he believes anyone could do it.
‘I can’t stress enough that if you’ve been thinking about flipping furniture or sitting around feeling helpless because you don’t have the money to do anything extra and you’re just sitting there feeling the weight of the world, I can do this.’
Harris understands that flipping furniture takes blood, sweat, tears, and some effort, but he says the payoff (literally and figuratively speaking) is worth it.
‘I’m not going to say it’s easy, but it’s not extremely difficult either. And as long as you have the motivation and enthusiasm in you, you can do it and it will help you,” she said.
She said she has also found a community of people who are in a similar financial situation as her and who are doing side jobs just to pay the bills.
Pictured: A dresser Harris bought for $40 and sold for $400.
“Many people have come to me and told me that they are in a similar situation to me and that they are tired of living paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “It was eye-opening to see how many others felt the same way I did.”
While some furniture makers ship their pieces, Harris is staying local for now.
All of their furniture is sold on the Facebook marketplace. But you have to be quick because they often sell out in just an hour.
So what does the future hold for this furniture-flipping fan?
“One of my big goals is to remodel a house on the island where we live and share the entire process with my followers,” he said.