Forget flipping houses, this woman flips furniture – and rakes in thousands.
With the cost of living continuing to skyrocket, many Americans are looking for ways to make quick money to make ends meet.
But Molly Harris, 32, (@flippedbymolly) has found profit from her passion: turning tired, discarded trash into someone else’s treasure.
Harris, a mother of two, moved with her family from Iowa 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 started restoring furniture that neighbors had left on the side of the road and is showing the results to an enthusiastic group of followers on social media.
Forget flipping houses, Molly Harris is flipping furniture – and raking in thousands doing it
Harris, a mother of two, moved with her family from Iowa 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 started restoring furniture that neighbors had left on the side of the road and is showing the results to an enthusiastic group of followers on social media.
Harris is no stranger to creative projects. In the past, she helped her husband devise renovations for “fixer-upper houses,” which they sold for a profit.
But despite having no previous experience in furniture flipping, she has now amassed almost 28,000 followers on Instagram.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, she said: ‘I noticed so many people putting furniture on the curb and giving a heads up about maybe a broken bookshelf or an old chest of drawers that needs updating. And I just thought, ‘I can work on that if I can.’
“Nobody was counting on me to contact them, so I thought, why not?”
She started researching, finding online tutorials on how to flip furniture and trying methods on her own pieces. And she hasn’t looked back since.
“The hardest part was getting started,” she said. “But then I thought, ‘Well, if I mess up, it’s just mine.’ But I was surprised how you figured it out along the way.”
“You get the hiccups and things don’t always go as expected, but then I just go on YouTube and figure it out, and before you know it you’ve flipped a piece of furniture that might be worth more now. ‘
Pictured: A chest of drawers that Harris bought for $50 and sold for $550
Before turning furniture, Harris owned an Etsy store selling nursery items, but said demand and tight deadlines left her pressed for time.
“I was answering messages at 8:30 at night when I was trying to go to bed, and you know, there’s stuff going on at the post office, something arrived, damaged — it just took a big toll on me,” she said.
‘Before we moved, I decided I would close it down temporarily and see how I felt after a few weeks. I just felt like I could breathe again without that constant communication with all my clients.
Harris said that while she isn’t making as much money as she did from her Etsy store (yet), her furniture flipping business is moving in the right direction.
“There’s a lot of money to be made flipping furniture and even more money to be made creating content,” she said. “My goal is to fully support my family within a year.”
Flipping furniture also gives her the flexibility to homeschool her two children.
Depending on the piece, turning a piece can take anywhere from six hours to a week.
‘I really follow my own schedule. If I have 30 minutes to work on it that day, then so be it. The goal I have set for myself is once a week. If I can achieve that, I’ll be happy.’
Pictured: A chest of drawers that Harris bought for $50 and sold for $625
She currently earns an average of $500 per week, about $2,000 per month. In four months she turned over sixteen pieces of furniture.
“The extra income helps us tremendously,” she said. “Even if you don’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 makes two thousand dollars a month?
“It’s such an amazing opportunity and a passion of mine. If I wasn’t doing furniture right 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 she has salvaged for free from the side of the road, from scrap yards or online through sites like Facebook Marketplace, while others she has paid a small fee for and then upcycled before selling them for a profit.
“You don’t have to buy super expensive supplies for this,” she said. She bought a sander, sprayer and drill for less than $200 dollars.
Pictured: A chest of drawers that 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.
Although flipping furniture may seem intimidating, Harris says she believes anyone can do it.
“I can’t emphasize enough that if you’ve thought about flipping furniture or felt helpless because you don’t have the money to do anything extra and you just sit there and feel the weight of the world, you can do this doing.’
Harris understands that turning furniture takes blood, sweat, tears and some elbow grease, but claims the reward (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 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 who take on side jobs just to pay the bills.
Pictured: A chest of drawers that Harris bought for $40 and sold for $400
“I’ve had so many people contact me and tell me they’re in a similar position to me and they’re tired of living paycheck to paycheck,” she said. “It was an eye-opener to see how many others felt the same way I did.”
While some furniture fins are shipping their pieces, Harris is staying local for now.
All her furniture is sold on the Facebook marketplace. But you have to be quick, because they often sell out within an hour.
So what does the future hold for this furniture lover?
“One of my big goals is to renovate a house on the island where we live and share the whole process with my followers,” she said.