Working with Furniture

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3 Ways to Make Extra Money with a Handyman Side Hustle

When construction and home renovation seasons become slow, it is important to think of creative ways to keep busy with your hands to keep funds flowing. Here are three things you can do to pick up extra work:

1. Making and Selling Your Own High-End Wood Furniture

These days you don’t even need to be a Master Carpenter to be able to make quality wooden furniture. All you need is the right set of templates, the right tools, and the right materials to create beautiful hand-crafted furniture that most homeowners would appreciate and enjoy.

Start by researching what pieces of furniture are trending in the market and make a prototype. Use it as a display model to promote and presell as custom pieces where customers can choose the colour and type of wood and finishing. Figure out the cost of the materials and your markup and price it. If you are new to woodworking, start with simple projects so you can make them relatively quickly and well done. Visit this link to access Over 9000 woodworking plans for wood furniture and small crafts.

2. Finishing Outdoor Furniture

Not everyone is aware that wooden outdoor furniture requires cleaning (power washing) and refinishing every few years. Because of moisture that causes wood rot and sunlight that bleaches out the natural colour and fades the original finish. A great service to offer your clients during downtimes is to refinish their outdoor wood furniture. This is often one of those things that sit on a homeowner “to-do-list” for years and never get done. You can remind them of their forgotten projects and sweeten the deal by doing it for them! Problem solved. There are a lot of finishes on the market, some better than others. Here is a link to a few sold on Amazon that you can use to compare.

3. Cleaning and Repairing Old Furniture

You can promote the cleaning and repair of old furniture to older clients who may be dangerously using and sitting on fragile pieces. You can be considered a local hero by offering your services to repair such hazards. Keep in mind that if there is something that is broken that is costs more to repair than to replace. Then be honest with your client and let them know their options. This can apply to all furniture types, indoor/outdoor, wood, or upholstered. Don’t oversell the value in repairing or cleaning if it’s not worth it. However, use this as an opportunity to offer your customer to build them something from a template, or help them to assemble something from a big box store like Ikea.

The bottom line:

As a Handyman, stay busy and create opportunities to be able to attract new and keep existing clients happy with these types of small projects in between the bigger projects that will come up down the road.