Most people who flip furniture work on one piece at a time. A seller who goes by @flipingwithkatie decided to see what would happen if she treated the job like a factory. She thrifted eighteen mismatched nightstands for $569, refinished every one of them in an assembly line, listed them on Facebook Marketplace and tracked what she made. The numbers she shared are some of the most honest we have seen from a flipper.
Her goal was simple: find out how much money she could make if she were really efficient. Here is how it went, with the prices she listed and the final tally.
@flipingwithkatie
Doing every step at once
The secret of her method is batching. Instead of finishing one nightstand from start to finish, she did each stage for all eighteen. She cleaned them all at once. She sanded them all at once. She repaired them all at once and built all the bases at once. She also painted the white set and the black set at the same time, which she says was very efficient.
Anyone who has ever cleaned out a garage knows why this works. Every time you switch tools or tasks, you lose time setting up and cleaning up. Doing the same job over and over keeps you in a rhythm.
Where the time went
She spent 17 hours painting the white and black nightstands. Spraying the primer was fast. What took far longer was the finish on the pieces meant to look like real wood. To get that faux wood look, she had to brush on the texture and the grain strokes, which took a lot more time than simply painting a flat color. If you are planning a similar project, that is a good reminder that special finishes eat up hours.
Listing on Facebook Marketplace
Once everything was refinished, the last part of the process was installing the remaining hardware, staging the pieces and listing them on Facebook Marketplace. She notes that sets of nightstands are very desirable, they sell quickly and they are hard to find on Marketplace. Some of her nightstands sold fast.
She also shares a useful lesson. When furniture sells really fast, that is fabulous, but it can be a sign that you priced it a little low.
The prices she asked
Here is how she priced the nine sets, in her words and order:
- Set two: $475, a white set.
- Set three: $475, also white, and she knew the modern design would be highly sought after.
- Set five: $400, because the detailed design might be harder to sell.
- Set four: $400, because the nightstands were small.
- Set one: $350, because they were small and very mismatched, and she was not sure they would sell.
- Set six: $475, listed high because they were really big nightstands.
- Set nine: $325, because they were itty bitty nightstands.
- Set eight: $325, simply because she did not like how they turned out.
- Set seven: $400, because they were very big nightstands.
Add those up and you get a total listing price of $3,625, which matches what she states in the video.
What she actually earned
The $569 was what she paid for the eighteen nightstands. She gives an all in price of $990, which covers her costs for the whole project. The total she listed for was $3,625, but the actual revenue she received was $3,460, a little less than the asking prices.
By our math, that leaves about $2,470 once the $990 is subtracted from the revenue. She says she put in 101 hours of labor, which works out to approximately $24 an hour, and that matches her own figure. It is worth thinking about. It is a decent wage for physical, skilled work, but it is not the jackpot some social media flips suggest.
What we can learn from her numbers
Not every project has to be a home run to be worth doing. Here are a few takeaways.
- Batching saves time. Even with 101 hours of labor, the assembly line approach kept the project from taking even longer.
- Special finishes are slow. Faux wood grain took more time than plain white or black paint. Price those pieces higher or skip the technique.
- Sets sell. People shopping for a bedroom want a pair, and a matched set is harder to find than a single piece.
- Size matters. She priced the big nightstands higher and the tiny ones lower, which is how most buyers think.
- Quick sales may mean you priced too low. If the first message comes within minutes, consider raising the price on the next listing.
- Know your hourly rate. Tracking cost, revenue and hours is the only way to tell whether a project was worth doing.
A thought for anyone decluttering
If you are working through a house full of old furniture, the lesson here is that mismatched, dated pieces are not always worthless. A little cleaning and paint can turn them into something a buyer wants. Even if you do not want to refinish them yourself, listing a nightstand set locally can be a good way to pass it along to someone who will use it, and to put some cash back in your pocket.
The most useful part of her story is the honesty. She shares what she paid, what she asked, what she earned and how long it took, and that gives other people a real sense of what flipping furniture involves.
