Furniture Refinishing

Image Gallery Buying and selling quality used furnishings and antiques can be a natural outgrowth of the furniturerefinishing business. In the photo above, Nancy Hall chats with a customer in one of the two farmhouse bedrooms that she and husband Tim have converted to showrooms.

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For the past five years, our two-person family has enjoyed the good life. We own a fine old farmhouse on three beautiful country acres, and we have secure, satisfying, rewarding jobs with the greatest employers in the world . . . ourselves.

But it wasn't always that way. Our current lifestyle wasn't served up to us on a silver platter, and success in business didn't come about overnight. We worked long and hard for both.

When we were first married, we punched time clocks. And though our employers sometimes seemed to be getting rich from our efforts, we certainly weren't. Consequently, the only way we could afford to equip our house with the fine old furniture we both loved was by haunting flea markets and garage sales in search of dirt-cheap (but sound) used furniture, then refinishing it ourselves. We found that we enjoyed working with wood, and as a result we put our best efforts into it—but we were still surprised when our friends not only complimented us on our work, but began asking us to refinish their prized pieces of furniture.

We did . . . and that's when our future began falling into place: Our friends told their friends, who passed the word on to othersand before we knew it, what had been an avocation brought about by necessity had transformed itself into a vocation of choice. (It seems that just about everyone has a few pieces of furniture in need of refinishing.) After a while, we were able to give up our jobs and keep ourselves busy (and solvent) working out of our own home, doing labor we enjoyed and (as we slowly began to realize) were good at.

So far, we've earned all or part of our income from refinishing furniture in Indiana, Florida, and the Carolinas, and in each of' those locations, demand for this service has exceeded the supply of good local refinishers. (Notice we said good refinishers; more on that in a moment.) And from what we've seen, a similar seller's market exists in just about every part of the country.

What can you reasonably expect to earn as a full-time refinisher? Well, you won't get rich quick—but neither will you or yours go hungry. Our first year, working an average of 60 hours a week between us, we netted about $15,000. That was five years ago, so it's not unreasonable to say that in today's economy a novice refinisher who's willing to work hard to deliver a quality service for a fair price should be able to match or even better our combined $15,000 the first year out. Once you've established yourself as a first—rate refinisher, there's really no limit to what you can earn from this business. We know of refinishers who are netting $35,000 a year and more . . . but they're very good at what they do. They earn their income.

If furniture refinishing sounds like it might be your ticket to financial independence, stay tuned and we'll reveal some important secrets of the trade.

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