How to Start Furniture Flipping From Your Apartment

To start with, you will want to buy: drop cloths, drop cloths, and more drop cloths. I’m only kind of kidding… PS keep reading to learn about my special guest.

As I have noted in some of my previous posts, my furniture flipping adventure got started from the living room of my apartment. And that is still my work space for projects. I will admit that sometimes I am daunted by the Instagram posts and stories of other furniture flippers who are able to work on more projects and take on more inventory at once, can work bigger projects, have greater ability to use power tools or paint sprayers based on their work space, and can stage their finished pieces beautifully for photos. Nonetheless, I am not letting this hold me back from pursuing this hobby that I am passionate about.

It’s certainly been a learning and growth experience in multiple ways, and with that comes meeting more people in the furniture flipping community. In the midst of brainstorming this post, I learned that one of the furniture flippers that I follow on instagram also does her projects in her apartment. Thus, for this post I am trying something new and I am teaming up with Emily Bichard of @restore_refurbish_revive to provide some thoughts and advice on how to get started refinishing and flipping furniture from small, indoors spaces. We spent some time exchanging thoughts on the suggestions we have to offer, and together we came up with the following list (Emily’s comments are in italics):

• Buy drop clothes! I had to get to this eventually…. I cannot emphasize this enough for protecting your rental/home and making clean-up easy. I have found that a combination of high-quality duck-canvas cloths and some cheap, disposable plastic ones work well.

• Invest in a foldable furniture dolly! I spent about $65 on an adorable pink dolly and named her Dolly Parton [Isn’t that so cute!]. This has helped me out so much. Half the battle for me is getting the furniture from my car, into the elevator, and up to my apartment! In my area, we have street parking so sometimes I'm a little hike away too. With limited space in my apartment, having a dolly that folds up and can stash away in my entryway closet is so great.

• Get yourself a utility shelf! Another key with limited space. You accumulate a lot of supplies with this hobby- paint, sand paper, brushes, waxes, etc. - you want to have a designated area where you can put everything away. Before I got this, my stash of supplies was steadily growing out towards the middle of my floor. Now everything is neatly organized vertically and takes up way less of my living space!

• Similar to that last one, a utility cart or something you can roll out of sight easily when not in use. When I host, I sometimes feel like I'm inviting people over to a construction zone with all my tools and gadgets. It's nice to be able to quickly roll everything away.

• Try to identify an outdoor space where you can use a power sander to quickly handle the big-area sanding needs, then flex that muscle to finish it with hand sanding. Even after I finally invested in a mouse sander, I found that the dust collector still didn’t catch everything and that it is quite loud (not great when you live in an apartment building with very close neighbors).

• Consider water-based products since they are way safer to use indoors and easier to clean up! I’ll be writing a post soon on water vs. oil-based products. If you do go the oil-based route though, be sure you have a lot of ventilation and consider wearing a mask.

• Remember, it is okay if your turnover rate isn’t as high as what you see others doing. For what it’s worth, I have read some comments about how the market for flipped furniture has stalled and that sales are slower post-COVID (have you found this to be true? Reach out and let me know your thoughts!) -- this is really challenging for solo flippers like myself who have limited space to store stuff. All I can really recommend for this is to be patient, make the most of the space you have, and consider some other tips from my post on “Getting Started with Selling (Beginner’s Luck or Lackthereof)” about how to potentially find a buyer and get your pieces to a new home sooner once finished.

• One other tip - that I haven't done but am thinking about- is renting a storage unit somewhere local. Depending on the size of the unit and the location, they can be very reasonable when it comes to the monthly cost. It'd be nice to have somewhere to store my inventory while I wait for it to find it's new home.

• For staging photos, do what you can with what you have. Find a well-lit space in your home and take some nicely staged photos of your piece from various angles.

• When living in a small space, the last thing you want is inventory sitting around and collecting dust [Literally, in this business]. Don't just stick to one platform. Post to Facebook Marketplace, Facebook Yardsale Groups, Offerup, Craigslist, etc. Share the finished products with friends and family. You never know who is out there looking for that exact piece you created! (Side note: I have been so FRUSTRATED with Marketplace recently. They changed it up and my items went from getting 400-500 views to like 20. And you have to pay money to boost/ promote your items if you want them to get attention. It's ridiculous so I've started posting all over the place). -- I couldn’t agree more with this tip about diversifying your selling platforms! And as someone who started marketing furniture flips after the Marketplace change, I had not realized it changed so much!

• Emily’s last tip is perhaps her best, because it is a reminder of the benefits of “big town, small work-space” furniture flipping situations: I will say, however, that the benefit of flipping from an apartment is that apartment buildings are usually located in more congested areas and with that comes more listings on Facebook Marketplace and more customers! I paid a visit to my parents a few weeks ago and they live in a more rural area. While there, I kept an eye on Marketplace and over the course of my stay (which was about a week) there were maybe four or five new furniture listings within a 30 mile radius. Here, there are new things every time I open the app! And I can be a bit more adventurous with my flips because I know there's probably more variety of taste with my local audience. I try to focus on the positives.

On that positive last note, I open it back up to any readers to reach out and provide tips you have for refinishing furniture in smaller, indoor spaces. Like all my other posts, this one is part of a constant learning process, so I (or Emily, or you!) may have more tips to add here along the way.