Day 2: Flea Market Flipping

In the Workshop of Flea Market Flip

For the 12 of you still interested in hearing more about Flea Market Flip, welcome back for a behind the scenes recap of Day 2: our Workshop day. (Check out our SHOPPING DAY HERE and the FINALE HERE!) Each season, Flea Market Flip sets up a fully stocked fully functional workshop in which we can makeover all of our purchased items. We’re allowed ONE day in which to transform our three items. We were allowed to spend $100 on supplies for our flips (think fabric, specific paint colors, hardware, etc.)

The workshop is cool, people. Really really cool. Half the space is a legitimate work area with tools like saws and drills and welding gear. There’s a spray booth for the painting… all ventilated and stuff. The other half of the space is television magic…. gear storage, an area where they take the before/ after shots, production office.

After our first day of filming, Jill and I were decidedly more comfortable in front of the camera. But as much as we loved the TV component and the banter, we were mostly excited to get our refurb. on!

Making Over our Flea Market Flips

We had two amazing helpers, Cija and Mark, who definitely did a lion’s share of the work… All in, I’d say we did 95% of the work for the locker-bench. (Except for cutting the wood for the base… they wouldn’t let us near the table saw. Me with my pregnant belly and Jill with her flip-flops.)

Expert Mark took the reins on our settee, but Jill and I kept laughing because he did a million percent more prep work to that thing than I would have done… he patched the wood, secured some joints, etc. It wasn’t until after lunch that we could even get a coat of spray paint on it. (I would have had that puppy painted before my coffee cooled down, but I suspect that’s why my job isn’t to refurbish old furniture..1)

Fabric for Flea Market Bench

Thankfully, we were able to bring fabric from my stock pile. We used the same chevron fabric that I used on my red armchairs… we struggled with our fabric choices as there was no telling what the taste of our flea market audience would be. The chevron is a little on the cliché side, but we wanted something that would stand out! We also went around in circles trying to stay true to our challenge: Funk-tional…we weren’t being judged on how well we interpreted that, but we still wanted to play nice and follow the rules.

The pendant light was definitely our vision, but without Cija we could never, ever have executed it. Going in we were optimistic that our helpers would be, um, really helpful. If they could help the team from Season 1 who needed to use special welding equipment to turn their SAW BLADE into a coffee table, then they could figure out how to drill glass and wire up some lamps. Most of our $100 was spent on lamp parts, believe it or not (and casters… casters are mad expensive)! I should give a shout out here to the ever awesome Mandi Gubler as I’m not sure we would have had the idea for the pendant if I hadn’t see her post on drilling glass!

Throughout the day, we got to see Ryan and Dave’s projects come together. It was clear that we weren’t going to be selling to the same customer… The fun of the show is seeing the stack of eclectic beat up flea market purchases at the beginning and then watching those items morph into something chic and sell-able. The Rocker’s bookshelf was amazing… their table was right off the pages of Restoration Hardware and their spider bench? Well… that was the one thing that gave us hope for a win.

We left the shop after a full day’s work with everything finished except for the settee which still had a panel or two of fabric to go… so the timing of the show is pretty accurate! And actually… had it not been for being pulled away for interviews, etc… we totally would have finished the settee as well!

Tune in tomorrow for all the twists and turns of our day selling at Antiques Garage. And then I promise… no more Flea Market Flip.

Read more about the show here and here.

And check out my whole PAGE of Flea Market transformations right HERE!