A Tale of Three Dressers. And of Flipping Them Ruthlessly.

After moving into my first all-to-myself apartment (a huge privilege in and of itself) I needed to get a bunch of my own furniture. This included a dresser for all of my clothes; at all my previous places I either used a dresser a previous renter left behind or just didn’t have enough clothes to warrant the extra space. I’m now on Dresser Number 3 and, 3 years later, have actually gained money from selling/flipping my old dressers. Like, hundreds of dollars gained. Who knew the dressers flipping business could be so profitable?

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Here’s all three of the big dressers I’ve owned so far! My current dresser is the nice brown one on the right, but the one I’ve had the longest was the white IKEA dresser on the left.

Dresser Flipping Origins

I plunked down about $40 to have it back in 2018. IKEA originally sold that particular piece in 2006. It also had weird stains in a couple of the drawers (how do you manage to stain clothes drawers?) but at the time I struggled to find a more affordable dresser. For some reason there were zero good dresser options in my area at that time, which has since changed in the world of secondhand. Or maybe I got better at finding ’em, who knows.

In that time I’ve also gotten better at actually transporting things. While hauling that thing up my stairs I ended up breaking part of it. It didn’t affect the usability but did make it a bit of an eyesore. That wasn’t an issue for me over the next couple years; I’m very much a practicality-over-aesthetics type a gal, and so as long as I had somewhere to keep my stuff I was good to go.

(Yeah, back then I hadn’t learned where to go to find the best stuff for the great price of free. That was part of my baby Darcy years. There’s a redemption later on, I swear!)

Flipping Dressers Part 2: A Wild Hooker Appears!

I used that IKEA dresser until I was walking down the street one random night. Just a few houses down from me I saw someone had left a much nicer dresser out on the curb. It had seven drawers to my IKEA’s six, had a lovely design, and was a lowboy dresser instead of a highboy. I decided then and there it was mine and undertook the effort of dragging it home. Which, being like 9 PM at the time, meant I tried dragging it as quietly as possible to not disturb/scare the neighbors. And drag I did all the way up into my apartment! This time I broke nothing (well, besides some scratches from the aforementioned dragging) and happily swapped out the dressers.

That was a sick find all around. At that time I had looked up the type of dresser it was – Mainline by Hooker – and discovered it retailed for $400 new. I can’t find the sites showing those prices today so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

This new bureau went into my bedroom and the IKEA one into my TV room/guest bed. And there it stayed until 2021, when my flipping dressers experience really revved up.

2021: The Year of Sweet Side Income, Apparently

Thanks to wanting to fulfill my $10k New Year’s resolution ($6,498 to go as of this article’s writing!) I decided to finally thank the ol’ IKEA dresser for its service and pass it on to the next person. I threw it up on a couple of sites that it was for sale for $40 or $50. Break even/small profit here we go. I got some bites but nothing promising until some random lady asked me for the number on the product label. I hadn’t noticed one before and couldn’t find one where she originally told me to look, so I let her know I didn’t see one.

She responded by letting me know of another place I could find it, but it got me wondering why she wanted the label so much. I already told her of the model type (MALM) and that tells you everything you need to know about the dresser thanks to IKEA’s website. Well, one “ikea product label malm” Google search later informed me that the lady probably wanted to see if that dresser was included in that model’s recall. If it was, she could bring it in to the IKEA store and get a full refund of what it was originally sold for: $137.

I was thisclose to selling a dresser of mine for $50… until I learned IKEA had recalled that exact model. One trip to their store later and I got a $137 refund instead. 😊💸 pic.twitter.com/gUSzrcASbS

— We Want Guac (@WeWantGuac) February 20, 2021

I know that specific number because I ended up telling her I wasn’t selling after all and brought it in myself. IKEA took it back automatically and immediately issued me that sweet, sweet refund. Getting paid nearly $100 for a dresser I bought for much less was really cool to me; I basically got paid for using it the last few years. Who can top that?

Topped That Dressers Flipping Pretty Quick…

Now enters Dresser #3. This one is an incredibly heavy, incredibly sturdy cedar piece I won at auction for one dollar. YES, ONE FREAKING BUCK. This was one of the first things I won at an online estate sale and I plan on trying my luck at more if I get something awesome like this without even trying.

I’ll also have to plan any future auction wins out better; this one proved a hassle to get home. All in all it involved one very strong friend and a friendly seller helping weakling moi, but we got it done. It’s a gorgeous piece that fits much more of my clothes than Dresser 2 did. See that bookcase in the background? Note the shelf with a bunch of folded clothes stuffed into it. All of those clothes did not fit into Dresser 2 and now have a new home in Dresser 3, with room to spare. I still have one more empty drawer in that thing and will delight in getting future thrift store finds to place in it.

I know this dresser is objectively the most valuable out of the 3 despite being one of the least expensive. It’s a Permacraft dresser from the Sanford Furniture Company in (probably) the 1960s. According to a mysterious antiques appraiser I found on the interwebs, these babies can sell for a solid $600 on Craigslist.

And so far I can totally see why: it’s got incredible craftsmanship and still has that rich woodsy scent despite being over fifty years old (give or take). And for its age it still seems brand new. I happened to meet the seller who had auctioned it and he gave me the background on the dresser: originally it belonged to his parents, who hadn’t moved that thing around their townhouse back in the 60s/70s. Knowing the context makes me that much more happy with the find. It’s clear his parents took incredible care of it and the rest of what they owned. This dresser will probably be with me forevermore, obviously having lasting power and just an outstanding piece of furniture.

… with an Even Bigger Profit

This now meant, however, that Dresser 2 no longer really served a purpose. Well, time to sell it on to its next owner! No recalls for this one but I still managed to make an even bigger profit off it.

During Mother’s Day weekend I had this great guy stop by to take a look at it; turns out he needed a dresser big enough for his growing family (he and his partner just had a baby!) but small enough to actually fit into his apartment. Luckily Dresser #2 fit the bill! On my day off I drove it over to Somerville where he got it out of my car and paid me $180 for the trouble. For a dresser I originally picked up off the curb.

In summary:

• Bought IKEA (Dresser 1) for $40 in 2018, sold/refunded for $137 in 2021
• Grabbed Mainline (Dresser 2) from curb in 2020 and sold for $180 in 2021
• Got Permacraft (Dresser 3) at auction for $1 in 2021 and currently using

TOTAL PROFIT: $276 off of flipping two dressers

Now that I’m getting into it I’ll discuss more auction finds on a future post. But so far, that and curbside finds in my rich town have treated me very nicely. Time to see how much more I can earn by flipping other items!

Cover image credit: Rumman Amin via Unsplash