One Year on: Selling, restoring and collecting Midcentury Modern

It was around this time last year that I reignited my interest in antique and vintage furniture. It was always something I wished I had spent more time pursuing, but the realities of getting a “real job” and growing a “real career”—or at least what I thought those things should look like at the time—always got in the way of the adventure. I don’t know why I saw exploring it as such a risk. Possibly because it’s a time-consuming art, and if there was one thing I was short of as the co-owner of a marketing agency and the parent of a thriving five-year-old, it was time. It felt like a luxury to study, to learn and to explore a new subject and world. But when my father-in-law passed away, it really made me realise that the things that make us memorable as people are not our boring jobs as desk jockeys, but the knowledge we build and share with the world—whether that’s at dinner tables, in Facebook community groups, on television, if we are so fortunate to have the opportunity, and beyond.

So yes, around this time a year ago, I started my project of finding an era of design that really captured my interest (and aesthetic desires) and studying it in every spare minute I had. And that turned out to be mid-century modern. But, as with most things in my life, just reading about it wasn’t enough. I taught myself how to restore furniture from the period, attended specialist auctions to understand what people were buying, and set up a permanent pitch at the Cheddar Car Boot Sale & Market, where I would go on to meet some of the most interesting and knowledgeable people in the trade (in my humble opinion).

And a year later, here are the most important things I have learnt.

You should be sad to sell your stock

When I started buying for my store, I bought things that I liked, but not always things I loved. I overthought what kinds of things people might like or what might be an easy flip. Interestingly, when my heart wasn’t in a piece, neither were the buyers. Odd psychology, but it certainly seemed to stack up. Whenever people palmed off freebies on me because they just wanted to ‘get rid’ of mid-century pieces, I never managed to sell them with any real success. But when I found items that I could really see in my own home and that I felt invested in, I cleaned them up better, restored them more thoughtfully, and spoke about them with pride. And you can’t really fake that kind of thing.

Do I think I’m a trendsetter and therefore people buy what I love? Not really. People buy from me because a) they like it, and b) I can talk about it authentically, backed by research and with genuine enthusiasm.

Good days and bad days can’t be predicted

While I was trading in the Green Shed from February 2026 until the end of June, I got a real taste of just how unpredictable retail can be. The winter was bitterly cold, which was advantageous for permanent traders because many sought shelter from the elements indoors, where our stores were—but at the same time, fewer people were coming out because, well, it was Baltic.

Then, as the temperatures warmed and the car boot market expanded, people came out in droves. The car park was unbearable, but we were all inside doing a rain dance to tempt people to come in. The factors that separated a great week from a terrible one were impossible to predict. Mother’s Day was a hit; Father’s Day saw crickets. A festival, a road closure, a Facebook post, even whether the pitch outside had put up a gazebo or not—all these things could have, would have, should have influenced success or failure, but there was no rhyme or reason to it. You just have to take the lows with the highs and try not to dwell on whether the invasion of Iran was good for the car boot market or catastrophic.

You can’t really sell where you buy

There’s not a moment when I regret having had my shop at the Cheddar Car Boot Market. I learnt so much in six months, met friends for life, and truly got a crash course in dealing. But at the start of this month, after pitching up at an antiques fair, I came face to face with the harsh reality that you can’t expect to sell at a significant (and viable) profit in the same place you buy.

Now, I did quite well, all things considered, and every week, bar one, I made a healthy profit after rent. But when I weighed the time and effort that went into running the pitch against the volume of sales, it didn’t add up—especially compared with one day at a fair, which more than quadrupled my normal takings.

So I made the hard decision to focus my energies on fairs, and I would give the same advice to anyone. If you want to learn the ropes, a car boot market is a brilliant place to start, but if you’re ready to make it a business, you have to take that leap of faith and do something bigger. I’ll never forget where I came from in this world of dealing, but I’m excited for the next step.

Restored mid-century furniture is where the demand is

When I started flipping furniture, I began by painting it because it felt fast and easy. I invested in a BRILLIANT spray gun—the Fuji Semipro spray gun and turbine, if you’re interested—and was able to churn out pieces really quickly. But they never sold for much and, actually, after a while, painting them started to feel like a disservice to the makers.

So I started restoring instead, and that’s when the furniture really started to take off. It took a lot of time, effort and many, many mistakes to get a restoration system in place that was quick, high-quality and respectful of the original design. Getting the top coat right was the hardest part, and it took me a good six months to find the right product, which I now import from the US.

Fortunately, mid-century furniture isn’t super hard to restore, thanks to the clean lines, relatively consistent materials and flat surfaces. As much as I would love to start restoring Victorian and Edwardian pieces, I fear I’d struggle to find the patience for all that detail!

It’s important to collect for yourself, too

Selling all your babies can be a little depressing. And this is something I’ve only started practising recently: collecting for myself. A good friend and colleague of mine always said that everything deserves its day in the house.

When I buy at auctions, I always try to get at least one thing that’s just for me. I bid to win, not to profit, and I adore it until it’s time to make way for something new. I feel like this is important because it keeps my feet on the ground. It reminds me that buying and selling is about pleasure, not just profit, and that, as the custodian of these items, I have the right to enjoy them just as the buyer does.

So, what’s next for the year ahead?

Well, I’ve done a lot in a year. I’ve learnt the basics of restoration, opened and closed a permanent pitch, and ventured into the world of larger fairs. The latter is where I think the next year will take me.

I’ll continue researching and learning; in fact, I suspect that will be a constant for as long as I’m doing this—nobody is the font of all knowledge in this trade. I’d love to work harder on my social media content and share what I learn along the way. I think this next year will be about building and slowing down: taking my time with pieces and getting to know them better, so that when I do attend fairs, I can do so with confidence in every item on the table.

If you’d like to follow along, please do: @flippinlovelyvintage on Instagram.

Between fairs, I’ll also have the showroom running at Winchester Farm, home of the Cheddar Car Boot Market, although the showroom itself is over on the industrial estate. I won’t be there all the time, so visits will be by appointment, but I’d genuinely love to welcome you, show you what I’ve been working on and, almost certainly, talk for far too long about a sideboard.

A year ago, I was trying to find my way back to something that interested me. I’m not sure where it will lead, but I want to keep following it. And perhaps that’s the most important thing I’ve learnt of all: not every adventure needs to begin with a business plan. Sometimes, it just needs a little curiosity, a bit of courage and one flippin’ lovely piece of furniture.