Three Reasons to Refurbish Furniture

The number of vintage furniture stores, creative collectives and Etsy entrepreneurial endeavors is increasing for a couple of reasons: 1.) the economy and 2.) the desire to live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle. What follows is a discussion about how refurbishing furniture falls under both categories.

Defining refurbishment

Simply speaking, refurbishment includes everything from repainting and reupholstering to repairing and redesigning pieces for an entirely new purpose.  It is taking a piece of furniture that doesn’t look like you want it to and changing it to match your need or taste.

Learning to live within our means

In an economy in which many are unemployed or underemployed and most are trying to cut spending, we are learning to either live with what we already have or to acquire new things in significantly less expensive ways. In regards to furniture, you may have your grandmother’s old wingback chair for sentimental reasons. However, when you realize you need additional seating for an upcoming gathering you decide to use it instead of buying something new. Instead of spending $200 on a new chair, you spend $75 on upholstery fabric and do it yourself.

Other families may need something they don’t already own but can’t afford to pay full price for.  Craigslist and thrift stores become a shopper’s haven. Even if the items do not look exactly like you want them to, a coat of paint can do wonders. I sold a twin bed to a friend who was recently separated from her husband and needed a “big girl bed” for her little girl. The bed frame was a stained oak color with plenty of superficial scuffs. Nothing about it looked like a little girl, but the mattress was good and the bed was well built. I sold the frame, mattress and box spring to my friend for $50. She took it home, painted the frame yellow and found a cute matching comforter. For less than $100 she had a cute “new” bed for her big girl.

Keeping broken things out of landfills

It has been said that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. When a flat screen television that needs repairs is set out on the curb and listed as free on Craigslist by a family who doesn’t want to bother with finding a repairman, the young father with an electronics hobby feels like he won the lottery. He uses his skills to repair the television, paying only a few dollars for a needed part. A large item that might otherwise have been tossed into a landfill becomes a useful item instead. That broken table may be useless to you, but to a skilled handyman it might be a beautiful wedding present for his daughter. Keeping such items out of landfills does more than keep our landfills from filling too soon; it keeps us from having to continually produce new items to replace what we’ve thrown away.

Giving something old a new life

With the help of Pinterest, YouTube, Craigslist and Etsy, it is possible to make this refurbishment hobby a profitable business. When you decide to compete with that girl from Storage Wars who has a shop in Dallas, Quickbooks may become your new best friend. If nothing else, it will help you to calculate how much you spent, how much you saved and how much you made. Instead of just giving a piece of furniture a new life, you can give your bank account a new life, too.

Guest Author: Tiffany Marshall is a freelance writer from Texas. When she’s not refurbishing her own furniture, she writes about topics like Quickbooks, Dallas, DJs and flowers.