Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk to Dani and Sherry from Second Chance Ohana about their furniture flipping business.
Second Chance Ohana YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvPLTrPAmNjtG5295qLpy8A?app=desktop
Second Chance Ohana Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secondchanceohana/
Melange furniture paint: https://www.melangepaints.com/shop
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Interview with Second Chance Ohana
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are so excited to talk to Dani and Sherry with Second Chance Ohana about their furniture flips.
Dani: We are so excited to be here. Thank you guys.
Melissa: Thanks guys for hopping on here with us. So we're really excited to talk to you. So furniture flipping is something that we've dabbled in and I want to get into it more, so excited to talk more about your business today.
Rob: And we've seen your guys' amazing transformations and yeah, very, very excited to talk to you guys and get some more information about that.
So, like I said, thank you guys for jumping on and doing this with us. We greatly appreciate it. And let's go ahead and dive in.
Melissa: Yeah. So tell us a little bit about your background, like how you got into, furniture flipping and do you do it full-time part-time let us know a little bit.
Dani: Yeah, so we are a mother and daughter furniture flipping team, and we live about a mile apart from each other in Phoenix, Arizona.
And we started really doing this as a business about a year ago. And prior to that we were kind of a pseudo estate sale company. I mean, not really. It was just friends had asked us to sell pretty much entire households of stuff, but that A. was a lot of labor and B. filled our entire home for months at a time, as we slowly sold everything off from people.
And it was a great way to get started and learning the best ways to resell items, household items. But we realized, hey, we can get a lot more for these pieces if we refinish them. And I mean, we've always been crafty and creative, so it was nice to change these pieces out and make them modern. Especially a lot of the old school, eighties pieces.
I mean, an antique will sell because people love antiques, but it's that like really outdated seventies, eighties stuff that we started with giving new life to.
Sherry: Yeah, and I'm retired. So I just, this is my hobby. It's my way, just to express myself creatively. And I don't really even care about the money.
Dani: That's true.
I mean, so I'm working on this full time and then you, I mean, she's almost full time, although she claims she's retired, but she lets me keep most of the money. Cause she's like, I'm good. I'm fine. So that's been a huge blessing for us.
Melissa: Yeah, that's fun.
Rob: I love it. That is so cool. So how did you guys figure, I mean, yeah, from estate sales and stuff like that, where was the mind shift of, okay. I mean, there's a lot that goes into furniture flipping. You have to sand, you have to stain, you have to paint, you have to do that. Where did you guys, you know, have any background or anything like that?
Melissa: Did you know all that stuff already or did you learn it recently?
Sherry: You know, we both have been DIYers for like forever and we just, you know, we're selling this stuff and we're like, you know, we can't sell like this, this is trash. Let's fix it up, you know?
Dani: And then I mean, we have a lot of the tools just because we've done some renovations. I mean, I remember as a kid that you renovated a couple of our childhood homes and yeah, so we like getting our hands dirty for sure.
Sherry: It's fun.
Melissa: I personally, I've done only, just a couple of pieces and I think it's kind of therapeutic too. Like you're just out there and you're just kinda, you have a project, you can see the finished pieces afterwards. I don't know, it's just something you kind of get in the zone and I want to do it more, but yeah.
Dani: I mean, it's totally true.
And we try to do about one piece a week. So every week having start to finish, like you end, you head into your weekend. You're like, look at this project. Look at this transformation every week to have that like completion, that satisfaction's really amazing.
Melissa: I was curious, where were you selling when you were doing the estate sales? Where were you selling most of this stuff off of?
Dani: Just Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp. And actually that's really where we're continuing to sell. We haven't entered the world of online shipping yet. Our stuff sells pretty fast and we haven't really had to yet, but we know we could make more if we really find a specific niche looking for what we're selling.
So we might be dabbling with the shipping soon and obviously learning from you guys. Cause you're pros at that.
Rob: Awesome. Where are you guys finding this stuff that you're doing? I know you said before, people are coming to you trying to get rid of their stuff. So if somebody wanted to get started, how are you finding these cool pieces to do?
Dani: We find them everywhere. We love thrift store hunting. We have found a bunch on Facebook Marketplace and, but Facebook marketplace is getting really like, people are getting weird. The prices are getting jacked up. So lately I feel like people just know now. And just yesterday we picked up an antique for free because someone wanted it out of their house.
And their interior designer was like, hey, you refinished furniture. Would you like this? I was like, oh, sure. How much is she selling it for? She's like, no, she just wants to get rid of it. You have to come pick it up today. Okay.
Sherry: At least half of our stuff is free. It's just given to us.
Dani: I mean, and garbage, both pickup day too, found a few things last week in our neighborhood from that.
Melissa: Yeah. I love that because we find stuff for free all the time too. And now, because we've told people what we do, like our friends too, they're like, hey, we have all this stuff. Do you want it? Like, they just don't wanna mess with it. And that like, you can get started at reselling no matter really your niche for free pretty much. Cause people will give you stuff.
Dani: It's crazy. And always having that mindset of like that side hustle. I mean, my husband and I have always had that, so we've always been willing to do the sweat equity to, you know, earn some extra cash for us. That's something. And that's why we took on that first estate sale in the beginning anyway.
Cause we're like, oh, we could use this money to renovate our RV, which we did. And it was amazing.
Melissa: Do you find, I know you said you redo a lot of them, but then what about like the ones, is there a criteria for you don't touch it and you sell it as is? Cause I know we found some stuff over the, in the past and it's like, okay.
It would look really pretty if we paint it, but then it's still pretty. It's nice, like it's so intricate, like how it is.
Dani: Yeah, absolutely. Just the piece, the antique we picked up yesterday, she actually had it professionally restored about five years ago. And I was like, why would we refinish this? It's beautiful.
So I think we're just going to sell it as is. And she doesn't mind, like she was like, just get it out of my house. And so if something's in great condition, it doesn't need to be touched, I have no desire to like throw paint on a gorgeous piece of furniture that does not need it. We usually use paint when we have to Bondo on something and do major repairs and you can't keep the wood pure anymore.
Melissa: Yeah.
Rob: Awesome. I did have another question. So I've seen some of your pieces and they look amazing. The one that really caught my attention was the TV that you guys made it into a liquor cabinet.
Melissa: Whoever's listening, you definitely have to go check them out on their Instagram and we'll tag it below.
Rob: We'll put a link below and I'm sure they'll say it, but where, so where are you getting your inspirations? Cause you can go every which direction with this. Where are you guys finding inspiration for these pieces that you're doing? Yeah, definitely talk about that.
Dani: Well, so we've really become passionate about re-purposing weird things that like an old TV cabinet, obviously can't be served as a TV cabinet anymore.
And so, I mean, bars are kind of our go-to. If we don't know how to use a piece, we turned it into a bar because they sell so dang fast.
Sherry: We're not even drinkers.
Dani: We don't really drink much. But I think because they're totally one of a kind pieces. So when someone sees it who loves hosting and having parties they're like that is the statement piece I need for a bar.
And like we did a sewing cabinet and turn it into a bar. And then obviously that TV and I mean, I don't know where the inspiration comes from. We just like to make some funky things. If it's not pure in its own true furniture form, you know what I mean?
Melissa: Yeah.
Sherry: Sometimes we'll see something on Pinterest or Instagram, you know, we'll save that, you know.
Dani: I haven't seen too much.
Melissa: Yeah, we got a, what was it? An organ on the 127 Yard Sale. And we're like, okay, we'll just post it as it is right now. And if it doesn't sell, we should turn it into a bar, but it's still sitting there. We haven't done it yet.
Rob: It's beautiful. It's got intricate woodwork. It's amazing. It's real. It's an amazing piece, but that's the next step is to actually make it into a liquor cabinet.
Dani: When you do, tag us, I want to see it.
Rob: Yeah, we definitely will. Now another question that pops in my head as well, because you're doing the larger items. These are, we do large items as well. How fast you and you're selling, you said Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp. How fast are these things moving, once you get them repurposed, redone, re you know, totally redone? How fast are they moving in your local area?
Dani: Surprisingly, cuz it seemed like dressers used to be our bread and butter. Have a great dresser and be gone in a week. Dressers aren't really moving right now. It is these unique repurposed pieces. So bars usually sell within a week and even the big, like hutch things that we've turned, you know, split into two pieces sell within days.
It's been amazing, but you know, sometimes we'll have kind of a boring piece sit for three weeks.
Rob: Awesome. That's a pretty quick time.
Melissa: Do you have for somebody like starting out like, oh, I don't really have a lot of room. Do you have, like, do you just work out of your garage? Do you have a storage or what do you guys do for that?
Dani: We have very gracious families.
And husbands. Yeah, so we work out of the garage. So we work out of my three car garage and she has a one car garage that are our workshops. And then, I store a lot of furniture in there, finished pieces that are waiting to sell as well as inventory that have upcoming pieces. And then she has an entire room in her house of, these are next pieces.
Sherry: We sold our pool table and now it's a storage room for used furniture.
Dani: Right when you walk in the house and that's how all her friends know what she's doing.
Melissa: Hey, I mean, you make it work wherever you're at, which is, I mean, that's a lot of people when they ask us, you know, getting started, do you need all, do you need to go invest in a storage unit or a warehouse?
And like, we didn't do that for years. So we just worked out of our closets or garage or whatever. So, yeah.
Dani: So we're trying to not get a storage unit, cuz like, as long as we can just, we hold, we only grab the pieces that we think are really worth it now, rather than every little piece that's a good one.
Rob: Yeah. Awesome. Talk about that for a second too, because I know we, when we're looking for furniture, cause we're not furniture expert experts by any means, but we like them. We're looking for good quality, you know, definitely real wood, but sometimes we'll see those brands that are actually either, they're stamped into the wood and brand names.
Talk about that for a second. Do you, are you guys looking for those brand names specifically or are you looking for just really, really well, good bones to work with?
Sherry: We love solid wood. We love the really nice brands, but mostly what we're looking for is anything that's in our price range, which is almost free.
Dani: Right. And so oftentimes that is not the solid wood name brand pieces. When we randomly come across those at a good price, we snatch them up every single time.
But a lot, are not solid name brand things because so much furniture from the seventies on is definitely a lot of composite.
Sherry: Yeah, particle board and MDS and you know, and that's okay. And we're getting really good at doing small repairs and we love to keep things out of the landfill. So, you know, we'll work with whatever.
Melissa: Just out of curiosity, how do you, like if something is cracked, how do you, how do you repair that?
Dani: If it's wood you just use some wood glue and clamp them together until it's nice and dry and then sand off any excess glue and, and you might still be able to even stain it if it wasn't too bad repair, but if something has like a major crack or something than it, you might need to repair it with something called Bondo.
Melissa: Okay.
Dani: But then you'll have to paint over that because there's no staining that.
Rob: And is this automotive Bondo? Is that what you're talking about for automotive?
Dani: Yeah.
Rob: Cool. Okay.
Dani: The wood filler Bondo. So that company makes a bunch of different kinds of Bondo.
But it's pretty
Sherry: much the same thing.
Dani: Smells the same.
Melissa: I remember my mom doing that on our old Buick with the rust. She Bondo-d it.
Rob: Yeah, that's awesome. That's good to know because yeah, like everything that we've ever looked for is definitely real wood, but you guys are doing awesome stuff and some of it is not. It's, if it's from the seventies and it's particle board or whatever it is, you're still getting some amazing transformations.
Absolutely. That's really, really cool to know. Yeah.
Melissa: When you say, I mean, it's awesome that you can get a whole bunch of stuff for free, so, but if you've saw like that name brand piece, what is a price point that you're comfortable with, like knowing that you're still gonna make profit, what would be like something the max?
Dani: Well, the normal, like the high end of what we're willing to spend usually is about $60. I will say this weekend though, we found a really unique Victrola not a record player, a phonograph player from 1904. Phonograph, and it has the crank. It's not actually in there, it's the piece though, but it still has the crank, it still has the needle, and the shape of it is just really unique.
And so we spent $70 on that and because it is a one of a kind kind of piece and we can definitely charge quite high for it once we turn it into a really cool bar.
Melissa: That's great that you've honed in, you know that those pieces sell so quick that if you just make it into a bar, seems to be doing pretty good.
Yeah. That's awesome. What, just on average, I know everything's unique and you can like, what do you charge for some of your pieces or how do you even know like what to charge somebody who's listening and wants to start, but they're like, I don't even know what to charge for these pieces?
Sherry: That's hard sometimes to figure that out.
Dani: Especially depending on your area.
We kind of have a system where we literally are like, what would be our dream price for this piece. And that's what we list it at for a couple of weeks. And some of the time it goes without negotiation at that price. But then within a couple of weeks, if it hasn't sold and we haven't had any interest or we'll go down too.
We always said before we listed, we set our dream price, our minimum taking price, and then realistically what we think we'll get for it. Cause we're willing to drop pricing on ours and negotiate just because we're dealing with Facebook Marketplace. I mean, if we were selling on Etsy, it'd be a different story.
But, so. I mean, there's a lot of calculators online. That's kind of like, hey, if you're selling to six drawer dresser, here's approximately how much you should be asking if you're selling a nine drawer dresser, here's how much. We just we've been doing this for so long. We kind of have a feel what our market's willing to pay.
And then obviously we have to charge extra if we put a lot of materials or a lot of time into it as well.
Sherry: Most of our things generally sell between $300 to about $500 range, right in there.
Dani: Unless it's a small piece.
Sherry: Or a larger piece.
Rob: That's beautiful. To give me kind of like on that, the TV that you guys, transformed, but what did you guys ask for that?
And how much did you sell that?
Dani: It was smaller, but we knew it was kind of a novelty thing. So we $350 or $300, we still ended up selling it for our asking price. Either $350 or $375.
Rob: Awesome. And what about the phonograph? How much what's your feeling on that when you guys get that done?
Dani: Because we paid more for it, I think we're going to list it for at least $425 and because it is such an antique, I mean, over a hundred years old.
Sherry: Yeah. And sometimes we just look at the end-result and it's like, well, how much would you pay for that?
Dani: You know, what is this actually worth to somebody? Yeah.
Melissa: And you, can't the thing with furniture is you can set your own prices because they're so unique and people like what they see like, oh, that would fit great.
And you can't get that, you know, everywhere.
Dani: Right, you can't really negotiate cause it's almost a monopoly, like one of a kind piece in this case.
Melissa: Now we're gonna have to go back and do that organ. The piece behind us, I wanted to repaint it and you said, no, we can't repaint it. It's a Curio.
Rob: Curio cabinet. Yes. It's got two drawers on the bottom of it, but yeah, we paid $75 for that.
And I have somebody who will pay $850 for it right now on eBay. But it costs it'll cost me $125 to ship it to them, so that'll come out of it, but we paid $75 total for it.
Dani: I've seen a couple of those around though on Facebook Marketplace. So just keep your eye out. You'll find another one in worse condition that you can refinish it.
Melissa: I know that's the hard part because if they're not in bad condition, he's like, oh, I don't really think I should touch it. Cause that was like the other antique tables that we found. I was like, okay, I can paint. He's like, do not touch these because I'm also not really, I'm still learning. So I probably should learn on some not so amazing pieces.
Dani: Start on small pieces, like nightstands, side tables, those kinds of things.
Melissa: What would be an average, like for an average piece, maybe let's say a dresser. Do you know how much in materials that costs on average, like paint?
Dani: Yeah. Between sandpaper and paint and repair, you know, Bondo or what, all the little things we need. And we almost always change out our hardware, which some people hate, but we think it really modernizes a piece and makes our stuff stand out.
So between all of those costs, it's usually $20 if we're not changing the handles all the way to $50, $60, if we're changing the hardware.
Sherry: Or if we're adding legs and a base that's another $25 to $50 depending.
Melissa: Where do you like to find your hardware? Cause I've looked for that before and it's not cheap.
Dani: Not cheap, usually Amazon, sometimes Etsy if I can't find it on Amazon, but the shipping lately, it's just on Etsy, it'll be like, it will be arriving at the end of June, you know, the end of March. And I was like, well, I need this piece for two weeks from now.
Melissa: So, so it's not going to happen. I think we went to where'd. we go? Oh, Hobby Lobby. And we need to go like some days they have 50% off. And then some days it's not, I'm like we got to come back next week. I'm not paying full price.
Dani: They have some cute knobs, that's for sure.
Melissa: So, so what would you say, like telling somebody, like, what are some like maybe three things that you attribute to your success in your furniture flipping business right now?
Dani: I was like, we took notes.
Melissa: Just some pieces of advice to give. Somebody maybe starting out in furniture, flipping.
Rob: Cause there's so many people that it's overwhelming to, to start, but they have that dream or that desire to try. Maybe you can just give them a couple of pointers of, yeah,, that you think they could start with.
Sherry: Yeah, I think number one is you have to have your family on board, you know, cause it is invasive. It kind of invades your home, your garage space.
Dani: And this isn't just a small little craft that you're doing.
Sherry: Yeah. And we need our husbands to, you know, be the muscle sometimes.
Dani: At times. Yeah. Yeah. So. And then the, I mean, you guys know this buy low, whatever you're getting, buy it as low as you can. Cause if you buy a piece for too much and put too much into it, there's no point in doing it if you're not going to make any money.
Melissa: Right. Yeah. One thing you said too earlier, which I want to talk about is you, now you can be selective in what you're finding, because you know, like you kinda know what you can get and you can be more selective, so you can get those higher pieces pretty much, right?
Dani: Yes. Yeah. We're much more picky now about the pieces we get for sure. Ones that we know we can sell for higher and ones that are going to take a little less work sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think, I mean, we pretty much spent all of last year using the income that we made to buy better equipment and tools. And that was just you know, because I still had the different income.
I was still a manager at a coffee shop at the time. And so we were using all of our funds to and reinvest in the business. So the tools have made our lives so much easier, but you don't need that. I mean, you can get a sander from Walmart and a can of paint from Walmart and you can flip stuff, but it becomes a lot easier once you have the right tools.
Sherry: And, you know, definitely we needed a lot of resources. As far as people, you know, friends who know how to do wood working, we have a couple of really good friends who are just, it helped us out so many times, which has just been incredible.
Melissa: That's awesome. Yeah. We talk about having, you know, creating relationships and creating contacts with you know, like that, it's a big thing for any business that you're in.
So I was going to ask you, so if I want to get into this more, what is a sander that you recommend, so I can put it on my wishlist?
Rob: Saw you had that dustless one that you're doing on one of your videos, that's a nice sander.
Dani: Yeah.
So the sander that we liked the most is actually just a BOSH orbital sander. I think it runs for like $50 and then make sure to invest in a lot of sandpaper, all the different grits, everything from 80 up to 320 is probably what you'll use the most. And then, we, because we do so much sanding and we're making a mess everywhere. We invested in something called the festool dust extractor that's $400 and that connects to any of your, anything that creates dust, it connects to it. So it just sucks the dust out. So you're not breathing it all in.
So that's been huge on keeping things clean and safe, you know, for our lungs.
Melissa: So if I do this for more, I'm going to need that. Okay.
Rob: That's awesome. Talk about a little bit real quick, also on the paint. Are you just going to Home Depot and Lowes? Are you going to hardware stores?
Are you using a favorite?
Dani: Great question. Our favorite paint is Melange One and it's a small company in Texas. It's run by one woman and her husband, the company is Melange. Melange One is the type of paint we use, which is an all-in-one paint. So it's got your primer, the color, the top coat, all built in. And then, you know, you do two to three coats on the area on what you're painting and that's by far our favorite.
And then sometimes you'll also need a separate top coat and we just use it from Home Depot or Lowes. They have polyurethane or what's the other one?
Sherry: Polycrylic by Minwax.
Dani: Yeah. So you either want a polyurethane or polycrylic as your top, top coat on surfaces that get a lot of traffic just for extra protection.
Rob: Awesome. Yeah. So how did you find that paint? Do they have their own website or are you ordering on Amazon or how is that?
Dani: You get it off their website. And, there's like three or four main furniture paint brands out there, and they're all very comparable, but we actually did a comparable test comparing three of the major ones.
And they're all very amazing. Very good. But Melange won just by a little bit, because everything about it, the application was incredible. The durability, you know, a month later it was incredible. So, that's our go-to and it's our favorite that we recommend to others.
Melissa: Awesome.
Rob: I love it.
Melissa: We'll put that link for anybody who wants to check it out.
Yeah. So awesome. And where can everybody find you guys? Where's the best place?
Dani: Yeah, we are, we show up in Instagram, daily on stories. We are the you know, @SecondChanceOhana, which is Hawaiian for family. Cause that's what we do. We give pieces of second chance, cause we've been given a second chance in life.
And then we also have a YouTube channel where we show every transformation from start to finish teaching you how to do the same thing. So on YouTube, we are SecondChanceOhana.
Melissa: Awesome. We'll put those links in the show notes too.
Rob: Dani, Sherry, thank you so much for spending some time with us, giving us some great tips.
I know you're going to change some people's lives.