Shabby Chic Furniture Painting is Booming!

Unfortunately, this blog has been put on the back burner. I have a good reason though. I'm growing like crazy! I've moved into a 3,600 square foot shop and I am able to paint furniture like crazy. I never thought it would get like this.

I've got all sorts of room to grow and I'm using the front of the shop as a display area. Is painting furniture profit? Can you make a living painting shabby chic furnitre? I say yes.

I'll try my best to update my blog as I find the time but I am currently working long hours as a self employed entrepreneur and trying to keep this thing growing big time! Wish me luck!

Beautiful Thomasville Find and Awesome Profit Painting Furniture

It has been awhile since my last post. I'm growing in popularity, getting more and more custom orders, selling shabby chic furniture like crazy, and trying to keep it all going. I'm starting to think that with the winter coming up, I may need to find a new location since painting in the winter wont be possible. I've already started searching online for some sort of shop to work in.

While out hunting for furniture, I found an amazing vintage Thomasville dresser at a resale shop. The price: $75.00. For those of you that do not know, Thomasville is sort of like the Ferrari of furniture, especially vintage furniture. I knew this piece would bring some good profit.

This was my first time staining the top of a dresser. The hardest part was trying to get the polyurethane smooth on the top. I've never done that before either but the customer was more than pleased with it. I sold this baby for $700.

My family members and even some customers are telling me that I should raise my prices since I am selling a lot of dressers around the $350 range. I feel like that is ripping people off since I've only been at this for a few months but I might try bumping up the prices a bit since this one flew out of the barn at $700.

Profit on this piece: ~$575

I Had to Move.

I'm starting to get serious about this shabby chic furniture painting thing. I've found that it takes me, on average, about 5 hours to paint a dresser with a paint brush. For the past few weeks, I have been obsessing on how much faster it would be to paint with a sprayer, not to mention the finish.

My Facebook page has been getting more and more followers and most of my pieces are selling within 3 days of completion. I felt that if I could paint faster, I could paint more furniture and, therefore, make more money. I also felt that if I had a professional finish, I could ask more for the furniture.

So I purchased a handheld sprayer (Graco Truecoat), did a little practicing and jumped in. I'm not painting in the storage facility anymore, but instead, I have moved back to my grandfather's barn, painting outside. With it being summer and in the middle of a drought, I'm not having to worry too much about rain messing up my day.

Check out my results. I picked up this dresser along with two nightstands for $250. I painted it black and sold it in the same day for $600! I still have the nightstands too. They will probably get custom ordered. If I break up the bedroom set cost, I'd say $40 each for the nightstands, putting my cost for the dresser at $170.

I'm sorry, but that finish looks so sick! I had several people wanting this piece. Note to self: Provincial furniture sells good.

I was also correct on my assumption that painting shabby chic furniture with a sprayer is much faster. This piece took me 2.5 hours. My profit on this dresser: $400. I paid $200 for the sprayer and it paid for itself with one piece. Net profit after buying a sprayer: $200.

There is some real money ready to be made here!

Another Custom Order!

Well, I got another request for a custom order. The lady wanted me to paint this small desk and chair black with some minor distressing on it. I got $200 for the order and it was an easy project. She'll be covering the chair herself.

After I finished this piece, I realized that I've pretty much mastered painting furniture as far as the painting process goes. I know that seems a little far fetched since I've been doing this for less than a month but look at that finish!

This piece looked like it was painted with a professional sprayer or something. The customer hasn't seen it in person but she is already very happy from the pictures. It looks even better in person.

Two Weeks of Painting Shabby Chic Furniture

I've slacked off on the blogging but I've been very busy painting furniture for some sweet moolah. In the past few weeks I have purchased quite a bit of furniture and also got my first custom order!

I also decided to start a Facebook page. I think it would be a good idea to start a following for people who are interested in what I do, or who are actively buying furniture. Who knows. You can follow me here: www.facebook.com/dfwshabbychicfurniture  https://www.facebook.com/thatshabbyguy (Updated to correspond with my new business name)

I'm going to rush through this post since I am kinda beat from too much furniture painting. There's a lot of pictures to show off.

I got this for free out of an abandoned storage unit thanks to my storage facility manager!

Sold this beauty for $400! My highest so far! $350 profit!

Got this one with a matching dresser. $100 for the set.

...and here is the matching dresser.

Sold this set for $550 for $400 profit.

I bought this dresser for $125 and sold it for $400. $250 profit.

I got these two dressers for $100 each!

Matching chest for the $200 set.

Someone on my Facebook page custom ordered the set for $800! $600 profit! 

I'm constantly looking for more furniture and I have bought more furniture to paint but I'll save them for later posts when I get it all painted and sold.

My painting furniture for profit business is still going strong. The past two weeks has yielded $1600 profit. I'm still in line with my previous post around $800 for the week. Shabby chic furniture is very profitable. I hope that I can continue this pace!

I Made Nearly $900 This Week Painting Shabby Chic Furniture!

Painting furniture for profit has been pretty good this week. I've painted more shabby chic furniture and everything is going good. I'm still new at this so I've ran into some problems here and there but it is just a learning process.

I decided that it would be best to paint near my storage since traveling to my grandparents every day is a bit of a drive, plus it is 100+ every day. My local storage facility has been nice enough to let me paint in a climate controlled 10x10 unit.

I picked up these two pieces this week. I paid $150 total. ($50 for the top one. $100 for the bottom one)

The top one was already painted but it was caked on big time. At first, I was hoping I could just resell it, but the paint job didn't look very good to me so I figured I would paint over it. Here are the results for these two pieces.

The top piece with the brown top was my first attempt at glazing. It didn't work out too well. I've watched some videos on how to do it and I think that by using stain as a glaze with a wax top coat was the problem. The wax seems to remove the stain. I'll have to look into that some more.

I sold the blue one for $250 and the black one for $300. 

I also did my first shabby chic bedroom set and a pretty cool painted coffee table. I'm still having people call me about the coffee table and originally had 3 or 4 people clamoring over it. I only paid $10 for the table. I was able to score the bedroom set for $250!

I'm starting to get good at applying the paint. I don't like to see brush strokes so I am, instead, painting furniture in thinner coats to get a better finish. You can see the wood grain in the coffee table in the finished picture. The coffee table sold for $150 and the bedroom set sold for $700

All in all, not a bad week of painting furniture for profit. I spent $410 on buying furniture, pent approximately $100 on supplies, and sold these pieces for a total of $1400! Rough estimates on profit put me around $890 for the week. 

I really think anyone can paint shabby chic furniture for profit. This is only my second week and I'm making some pretty nice money! I'll reinvest this money and keep it going for sure. I'm all in on this thing now.

How I Made $400 in One Day Painting Shabby Chic Furniture

Do you want to hear how I made $400 in one day painting shabby chic furniture? Sure you do!

I'm so excited about my results today that I decided to start a blog about it. I really think that painting furniture for profit is an interesting subject, especially with how hot shabby chic furniture is right now

I've painted a few small shabby chic style pieces in the past but I didn't feel like I was very good at it and I went in another direction when it came to making a few extra bucks. To be honest, painting my first piece was a nightmare. It was a little nightstand and I didn't know what I was doing. (I still don't think I know what I'm doing! Hah!) However, I when I put it on Craigslist, it sold in one day for $50. Look at this thing. Bleh!

My first piece. Look! I didn't even have the drawers in right!

That was back in March. I dabbled in selling on Ebay for awhile but after that slowed down, my wife said I should try my hand at selling painted furniture again. So went out the other day and picked up two dressers. The cost? $150 for the pair! Not bad if I do say so myself.

I was so excited, I ended up staying up all night painting them. I started around 9:00PM and finished at about 6:00AM. Are you ready to see the results?

I have to say, I was intimidated about painting furniture that was larger than the small nightstands and coffee tables that I did earlier in the year but it was pretty much the same deal. It just took longer.

So, I put these up on Craigslist when I got home. I priced each one at $300. That seems to be the price that most people are selling shabby chic furniture at right now. I was beat, so I conked out for a few hours. When I woke up, I had missed calls and texts from people wanting to purchase them already!

Long story short, by 6pm, I had both of them sold and delivered. I spent about $50 on supplies. Luckily my grandfather's barn, where I painted these at, had a lot of tools and stuff that I needed already.

My total profit for painting shabby chic furniture like this? Somewhere around $400. I just made $40 an hour and I barely even know what I am doing! I'm going to go get more dressers and keep this going. I'll try to update as often as I can. To be honest, I have a bad habit of not keeping up with blogs but I'll do my best to share my experience with anyone out there that is interested.