Dressed in paint-splattered denim overalls and a pair of chocolate brown heeled boots, Thalia Aguilera strips the finish off a wooden table using an orange paint scraper.
Knives, Aguilera’s nine-year-old Jack Russell Chihuahua, watches through a screen door as her hardworking owner scrapes and sands away at the commissioned furniture.
Maybe Knives knows, maybe she doesn’t, but the work her owner does of repairing and restoring furniture for sale, paid for her life-saving treatment. It also led Aguilera to starting her vintage furniture resale business called RetroDenverFinds and to finding a community among other women who do the same kind of work.
Two years ago, Aguilera took her beloved pet to the vet for what seemed like minor stomach issues. It turned out Knives’ heart was failing.
“Getting that diagnosis for her stage III heart failure, I did not want to imagine what it was like to live without her,” Aguilera said. “And if it meant that I had to sell everything that I had, I did that.”
“I wanted so badly to just ignore what they said and crawl under a rock,” Aguilera continued.
Aguilera, used to living paycheck to paycheck, faced a daunting $600 cardiologist bill to save her pup’s life. Desperate but determined to raise the money needed, she turned to her passion for thrifting.
“I realized that if I could frame things in a better light, then I could do a really good job when it came to selling furniture,” Aguilera said. “I sold all of the furniture in my home. My bar stools and anything else that was not on a payment plan already from Wayfair.”
Originally from Atlanta, Aguilera moved to Denver from Houston in 2020.
The thought of losing Knives, a member of her little family here in the city, seems to have sparked a determination within Aguilera to see a solution through.
“I don’t want to live a life where I have a problem and it totally consumes everything about me,” Aguilera said. “I was willing to ask a dozen questions. It’s feeling like you have somebody in your life that you want to give them your best and you want to know that you really tried everything. For me, that’s Knives.”
Using just one magic eraser, a screwdriver and after doing tons of research, Aguilera sold enough pieces to pay for Knives’ medical expenses. And before she knew it, she had developed the framework for the vintage furniture flipping business that she runs to this day.
“It wasn’t until eight months after that I got my first sander,” Aguilera said.
Because she works out of an HOA-limited condo in Denver’s University neighborhood, Aguilera has become an expert in power tool-free flips and has come up with creative solutions for redoing entire dressers so as not draw a noise complaint.
“When I first started using my sander I had so much anxiety, I was just hoping that somebody would think it was like the world’s loudest vibrator,” Aguilera said.
When she’s not on the clock at her job as an account administrator for Kaiser Permanente, Aguilera is on the hunt for old furniture, refinishing them and delivering them to local buyers.
On social media, she promotes other local businesses, offering a 10% discount and free delivery on all her items if customers also buy from other BIPOC-owned businesses that she’s either connected with or researched on her own.
She also uses her platform on Instagram to share tips for aspiring furniture flippers.
“People don’t just want furniture and décor,” Aguilera said. “They want something that doesn’t require words to communicate who they are. It’s a piece of your home and an extension of who you are. Bringing people closer to who they are has been really beautiful.”
Furniture flipping led Aguilera to connect with France-Lee Griggs and Monserrat Celaya. Together, they hosted one of the few non-clothing booths at this year’s ThriftCon.
Their group chat is currently titled God’s Plan (poking fun at Celaya’s Drake fandom). The trio uses the chat to brainstorm how to improve their vintage flipping businesses and, anytime someone makes a sale, they celebrate one another.
“Any friend of theirs is a friend of mine,” Aguilera said. “We congratulate each other so that we always remember that there’s something to celebrate.”
Griggs said they talk about their big dreams adding that “We try to uplift and empower others by being really transparent about our businesses and just being our true selves on social media.”
Griggs founded Chez Mémé Vintage (meaning “at granny’s house vintage” in French), named as an ode to her grandmother and her memories growing up in a village outside of Lyon, France. She resells vintage Turkish rugs and other décor.
“I knew very few people in Denver and I just kind of appeared out of nowhere,” Griggs said. “Somehow all the local vintage resellers found me and they started messaging me and supporting me. [Aguilera] was one of the first people who did that.”
Griggs has lived in France, Germany, Panama, Ireland and the United States. Griggs works as engineering program manager for Google, but after work, she sells hand-woven rugs on Instagram and Facebook Marketplace. Griggs and her husband moved from New York City to Denver after the pandemic and eventually launched her business in January 2023.
“When I moved to the U.S., I noticed that a lot of Americans tended to have a lot of brand new things that matched,” Griggs said. “In Europe and in other countries you are either inheriting something or have used things. It creates this beautiful décor vibe. So I just started flipping furniture and things that I would find, very similar to [Aguilera].”
Their shared passion for vintage flipping is also rooted in sustainability.
Aguilera avoids using single-use products in her flips, working with what she has in front of her. Griggs said that furniture can be refinished multiple times and quality rugs can be passed down for generations.
Originally from Chiapas, Mexico, Celaya and her father decided to go all-in on a furniture flipping business when her father, the family’s main source of income, lost his job in 2021. Celaya had just quit her position at Starbucks when the news came home and she had only started flipping furniture as a hobby two weeks before.
“I wasn’t doing it as a business. It was just for fun,” Celaya said.
Two years later and over 400 refurbished pieces, the father-daughter duo run Vintage Gems Denver, a vintage furniture reseller that has provided for their family of four flipping furniture on Instagram and Facebook Marketplace.
“I remember that there was some hesitancy with sharing who we were online because [Celaya and I] were people of color, because we were women, because we thought that as soon as they saw who we were our credibility would be lost,” Aguilera said.
Aguilera would eventually make the decision to change her profile picture to herself, and Celaya has most recently started sharing who she was on social with the help and encouragement of Aguilera and Griggs.
“I want them to see the person who is creating everything and feel like they’re talking to a human,” Aguilera added.
At their 2023 ThriftCon booth, the trio curated a different kind of shopping experience. Price diversity, as Aguilera calls it, looked like offering free or low cost items throughout their space so that interested shoppers could be empowered to explore.
“I wanted to curate it that way because I don’t like the stigma behind sales or clearance,” Aguilera said. “Including price diversity and options gives people a new sense of accessibility and empowerment.”
“One of the things we talk about a lot is making goods that feel inaccessible, accessible to more people,” Griggs said.
As for Knives, she’s constantly in search of pets despite her diagnosis and a severe spinal injury in 2022.
In October, Knives tripped on a walk and wasn’t able to lift herself up after. She had suffered a spinal injury.
“I watched this heart-wrenching trembling that her body was doing,” Aguilera said. “I remember seeing the relief go through her body when those pain meds hit and she could finally relax. I wanted to cry.”
Looking ahead at the future of RetroDenverFinds, Aguilera is excited about finding new and innovative ways to share what she’s learned with those around her.
“I’ve seen a lot of other people encounter difficulties when it comes to feeling like you want to do the absolute best by your kids or your pets,” Aguilera said. “[RetroDenverFinds] made me realize that the things that I liked doing are valuable, and if they’re so valuable to me, it’s valuable to others.”
Knives still has stage III heart failure and visits the vet every month for injections to help treat her spinal injury, but from what we gathered, she’s a very happy dog. Bouncing and trotting around the condo with ease, Knives commands love, attention and belly rubs.
“I got to see what I was capable of,” Aguilera said. “I’m really thankful for [Knives] and everything she’s helped me create through just a passionate love for a puppy.”
