In 2020, Tyler and Lindsey Dobson started upcycling furniture they found on the street to furnish their home in St. Petersburg, Florida. But their hobby would soon turn into a lucrative side hustle and eventually transform their lives as they leveled up to flipping entire homes.
“As we accumulated more and more [furniture], we didn’t have space in our house,” Tyler tells CNBC Make It. “So we decided that we could make a run at doing this for a nice side hustle, and it just kind of rolled from there.”
At first, the couple flipped about one to two pieces of furniture a week, earning about $500 a month in profit by taking discarded items like dressers and chairs and refinishing them. They say that grew to around $1,000 a month as they dedicated more time to upcycling.
They also started pulling in extra money from brand deals and social media payouts as they grew a following sharing videos of their furniture flips — and later, home renovations — on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Flipping homes was a “natural progression,” Lindsey says. In addition to filling it with upcycled furniture, the couple began making renovations and additions to their own home. When they moved in 2021, they were able to sell it for $352,500 — more than double what Tyler had paid for it in 2018.
