Furniture Flipper Reveals Her Four Biggest Restoration Fails-'The Last One Is Tragic'
If you've ever watched the @builditlikebecker channel on TikTok, you know that the Becker family's videos typically focus on their impressive furniture flips. However, daughter Amanda Becker decided to peel back the curtain for a recent video, where she revealed four of her biggest furniture flip fails of all time.
Keep reading to learn about these mistakes - so that you can hopefully avoid repeating them in the future!
Becker Accidentally Poisoned Herself Working on a Tall Chest of Drawers
After accidentally dropping her sander on a tall chest of drawers, Becker put the piece aside and let it sit in her garage for nine months. But unfortunately, that accident wound up being the least of this chest's problems. Firstly, she accidentally poisoned herself with the toxic chemicals in the lacquer finish she used, since she didn't wear a proper respirator.
Then, she set out to stain the wood. This should have been simple, but due to high humidity and accidentally using a penetrating wood stain, everything went wrong. After trying a few fixes, Becker gave up and just covered the entire chest with white paint and wallpaper.
She Let This Dresser Sit in Storage for Two Years After Her First Flip Attempt
Becker made mistake after mistake when trying to upgrade an old orange wood dresser. She accidentally sanded through the tabletop's veneer, she used the wrong primer and she chose a questionable mint green paint color with clashing gold hardware. She was so unhappy with how this piece turned out that she kept it in storage for two years before taking another whack at it.
The second time around, she stripped the piece down, replaced the bun feet with new feet, had her dad help her make an ornate trim and then she painted the piece black - and it turned out gorgeous!
@builditlikebecker Never give up #furnitureflip#furnituremakeover#DIY#TiktokLearningCampaign#LearnOnTiktok
original sound - Builditlikebecker
Pole Wrap Saved This Midcentury Modern Dresser
Becker says she let this flip "haunt her" for several years. On her first attempt to restore this vintage midcentury modern dresser, Becker tried filling in chips and dings with wood filler - which only made things worse. So when she returned to this dresser years later, she decided to simply cover each drawer front with bamboo pole wrap, which she painted black. She also restored the tabletop and the legs, and the final product turned out modern and so much better than the original.
Counterfeit Brass Brushes Almost Destroyed This Dresser
Becker called this furniture flip a "tragedy." After stripping the black paint from the top of a $50 walnut dresser, she used what she thought was a brass brush to scrub paint out of the walnut wood grain. However, it turned out that the brush was counterfeit, and was actually made with steel bristles - which interacted poorly with the water-based finish that Becker used.
So just as Becker thought her project was almost over, she had to start over. A few months later, she returned to the project - and in the end, she managed to turn the dresser into something truly stunning, which she sold for $1,250.
"While mistakes did happen - some of which were not my fault but most of them were - I learned something from all of them, and it's made me better," Becker concluded at the end of her video.
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This story was originally published May 29, 2026 at 10:00 AM.