/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Hey /diy/

Have a little bit of a problem.

Acquired this 22" HDTV for a steal, essentially NIB. But this is part of the problem.

It's just a small splotch of white paint, but it would help a lot if I removed it. Using paint thinner will potentially damage the LCD screen. Anyone have any experience with this? What should I do?

>>309526

She miscarried at the hospital. No stains, no bedbugs.

>>309532
>>309538

Man my first matress I literally took out of the dumpster.

They sell. Not as well as other stuff for obvious reasons, but they sell.

>>309486

Oh, and everything was complete. The couch cushions are inside the truck. Obviously, it's a bad idea to buy furniture missing important pieces like couch cushions.

>>309486

Deals like this come around every so often and are usually pretty good. Not everything will sell but I will recoup the expenses several times over. It was quite a lot of work but very much worth it.

>>309237

America. An LLC costs $50 and you can do it online in this state.

Pic: $75 cost. Not shown: another dresser, a baby bed, 2 BBQ grills, a card table, and a 22" Vizio LCD TV that I'm selling for $100.

This was a girl who's BF ran out on her and left her with the bill. She's moving in with her Grandma, and if I hadn't taken all this stuff she would have had to drag it to the dumpster.

If I was cruel I could have talked her down even more, but she was sweet and 18, and had just suffered a miscarriage (which was what caused her BF to run out on her.

>>309130

To start with I didn't. It's similar to how you don't pay taxes when you sell your old iphone. It's too small time and the govt doesn't really care.

If you're paranoid about it, keep everything in cash.

Once you get to be a bigger operation you should file an LLC, open a bank account and go 100% legit.

Talk to other small business owners some time; you'd be surprised (and saddened) by the fact that you just can't open a business anymore without a shitton of capital or by simply skirting the tax man. If you feel guilty about it, there's a line on your tax forms for donating extra money to the government and you can just pay it back that way.

>>309120

You just politely say "I'm sorry, but I cannot go lower than $x" and stick to that.

>>309135

I play it by ear. Usually there's so much profit inan item ($50-100) I just calculate costs as about $0.25/mile (gas and wear-n-tear) and leave it at that. If it looks excessive - especially for lower profit items - I'll call the customer and let them know that, sorry, but I'll need $5-10 extra due to their distance from me.

I've never had someone get angry with me for saying that.

>>309171
>start a blog
>for 4channers

lol, sorry. I have a blog but I'm not linking it here.

>>308762

50 sounds like the upper bounds of what that table will sell out. To be frank it's just cheap.

There's a reason I said tables are a little advanced, there's more to them than just "good condition." Make sure all the measurements are there too, that will help.

Would maybe have paid 5 for that table. But keep at it. You're learning, and that's worth the money you spent.

>>308756
What ae you selling it for?

>>308746

Post after 5pm (otherwise the dealers flood you out.)

Post a pic of the table.

>>308589

This is a good idea too. One of the things I did before was appliance removal: people would pay me $10 or so to come by and pick up their big appliances (fridge etc) that had stopped working. I would then scrap it. The 10 bucks paid for my gas, the recycling fee was my profit.

Not very effective to be honest, but hey.

>>308657

Break it up?

Sorry to bother you, but apparently some people are interested.

If you don't post it, after work tonight I'll try to redo it if I'm not too tired.

>>308372

At least a few people screencapped the previous thread where I explained what I'm doing in more detail.

Can someone please post it? Surely they are around some time during the day.

Going to bed guys. My daughter learned how to roll over today and I've been busy playing with her all night. Hope this is helpful to some of you, especially younger, who are in need of cash.

>>308360

Denver, why?

>>308354

Probably hour to grab the two items, another hour to do the two deliveries.

But that's still far below the effectiveness we want long-term.

Second item, coffee table, $35. Bought for $5.

Again, a good item to start with, and never hesitate to snap up stuff in good condition for 5-10 bucks, but low-dollar items have their big-% profits eaten up quickly by gas, wear & tear and you end up with surprisingly little money.

Once you have a storage unit and a going operation, I suggest you make one day your "cheap stuff" day and deliver all of your cheap stuff on that day. It'll be a heck of a lot of work compressed into a few hours, but it'll net you bigger profits.

Here are the two items I sold.

1st: 3 drawer dresser. bought for $5 (I thought $10, but I just looked over my notes and I talked them down,) sold for $40. This is okay to begin with, especially if you don't have a lot of cash, but you'll want to mix in more expensive stuff as you move on. Always snap up solid wood (ie not particle board) wood furniture if it's $5-10 and not totally scratched up / gouged / painted / falling apart. You'll make good % profits, but you need to do several (preferably all delivered on the same trip) to make a decent amount of money.

When you start you will work at a pretty low rate. That's okay. You'll learn what sells well and what doesn't, and sometimes it's just slim pickings.

OP pic was a good example of something that can work, though. I paid $20 for it and it's currently for sale for $150, and I am confident it'll sell for that.

It comes with 4 wood chairs. Everything is very solid and no scratches on top (for tables, this is super important. If it looks shitty it won't sell.)

Anyway, items like that are what you can snap up and make a quick, very happy profit on.

Bigger items (big dressers, dinner tables, etc.,) can net big wins. A few of those every week and you'll be hundreds of dollars up in no time - and ready to invest more money into office liquidations and the like.

Anyway, wanted to update y'all, I said I was starting over and I wanted you guys to know I wasn't just BSing with it.

Hi /diy/,

Wanted to update you. I was delayed for a variety of reasons.

If you missed it, I had a big /diy/ money thread about making money in spare time via going to garage sales and eventually upgrading to office liquidations. If someone wants to repost that, I would appreciate it.

Basically, here is what I did without too much trouble so far this week:

Fri: Acquired shit (some of this stuff is carried over from last week, but i wasn't able to do any work last week so leave that aside.)
Today: Sold two things, for total of $75
Cost of materials: $15
Cost of gas, for deliveries + pickup: $15
Total profit: $45

Now, this is small time, but it's only the very start. This is what you would do to start off with $50 (at which point you'd be at $95.) What I did with that money was go out and found a gem that you'll often find. Pic related...

Also, it gets easier the more you do it. Aristotle was actually quite right:

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy'"

We are what we repeatably do. As you do things, they become easier (generally.) Now it's a lot easier to start for me than it was when I was younger.

You just kinda have to power through and start.

I forget where I heard it, I think some comic actually, but one of my favorite sayings is "All the important things in life are simple. All the simple things are hard." That's been very true in my experience.

Go back to /pol/ you children.

On the off chance that you're not just a liar / troll, OP: panhandle, women-only shelters and recycling to get you started (collect cans, ask the other (female, if possible) homeless where they can be found.)

Ignore the idiot who railed against Texas and then offered you, as advice, to travel on foot or hitchhike 1,500 miles. He is both stupid and completely useless.

Here's the bottom line: when you're that down and out, your fastest and best bet is to depend on the kindness of strangers. Being picked up by the cops is often a bonus, as you get free food and shelter for the night if they keep you in jail instead of just giving you a ticket. But panhandling, if you don't look like a crack whore or serial killer, is a very effective means of getting a basic store of capital to wash yourself up, get you shelter/decent food until you can find a low paying job, the next wrung on the ladder.

This isn't politics, and frankly I'm not going to win or entertain an argument on the internet with some teenager or early-20s person who thinks they have it all figured out and can show you what's wrong with this party/country/etc in 140 characters or less. And frankly that's not the purpose of this board anyway.

>>301158

Link? I would be fascinated to read it!