the last redo: a flora and fauna highboy

So I'm a liar liar pants on fire. (On a related note, have you seen this. Hi-larious.) 

I said that I was done with refinishing furniture, but I had this gathering dust (literally) in our garage. You can see what it looked like before here. 

My rational 29 year old self tells me that a dresser is an inanimate object and shouldn't give me that many problems, but apparently I'm the kind of person that can be bullied by things that don't have brains. Because this dresser gave me a bazillion issues and made me have to think way out of the box. 

Truth. I fully redid this dresser 3 times before coming to the final redo. Dedication baby. Or insanity. 

So here.

Behold...

Before Julia. 

After Julia.

Flowers. Enough Said. Who doesn't love flowers? Maybe I got my obsession from Aubrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (I've a right to sell flowers if I keep off the kerb. I'm a respectable girl: so help me, I never spoke to him 'cept so far as to buy a flower off me) but I love me some floral and fauna.

I was concerned with it looking too much like either a. a wedding cake b. something circa 1986 or c. a hippie flower power tribute. I hope (and think) that it doesn't look like any of the above 3 possibilities. Maybe I made this dresser's life a little better? Yeah. I think so

At first this dresser gave me a truck load of unforeseen challenges. When we brought it home, I thought it would be a quick update because the lady had some good bones. But then the carved boarders threw me and the hardware and OK really that's only 2 things but it felt like a lot more. I tried painting it pink and painting the boarders white. Flop. I tried painting it light gray and doing a Miss Mustard Seed detail job. Flop #2. So I shoved the dumb dresser into the corner of the garage and left it for months.

I'm not really sure how the idea of the flowers came to be. My sewing fabric skills are a big fat zero so my sweet friend Heather made the flowers and I love the that it's not a traditional dresser, but that it's not on the train to funky town.

A few more deets in case you're interested.

The original boarders were filled with wood filler.

The paint color is Antique White by General Finishes.

The knobs are Hobby Lobby.

The fabric for the flowers is a basic cotton blend and I attached them with a dab of super glue.

And one more Eliza Doolittle quote because isn't she everyone's favorite flower girl?

The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. 

Well said Ms Doolittle. Well said. We'll call this dresser Eliza after you.