One of the easiest things you can do to change the look of a dining room or anywhere else where you have a simple upholstered seat chair is to change out the fabric, but I always hear people say that they don’t know how to do it and don’t trust themselves to either. Even after I promise them that they can definitely do it themselves. In fact, other than painting, this might be the easiest DIY project there is. Some of you may recall awhile back when I shared the inspiration for my daughter’s bedroom makeover. Well I made major progress on it over the weekend and just have two things left to do before I will actually be able to call that room complete and will share it with you!

One of the projects I tackled over the weekend was reupholstering the bench that came with her vanity set. She got the vanity set from my aunts last Christmas. She’d been loving her friend’s Little Mermaid vanity, but I was hell-bent on not adding another hunk of plastic to my house and asked them to get her a real vanity that would stay with her through the years, and at three years old she’s certain to get a lot of years out of it. I found one I liked, but never liked the faux velour fabric on the bench seat so it was a must-do on my room makeover list.

1. Flip bench or chair over and unscrew the screws (you’ll most likely need a Philips head screwdriver) that hold the base and seat together.

2. Take the seat cushion and center it on your fabric. You’ll need enough fabric to pull it over the bottom of the seat by about two inches. I was lucky enough to be able to have Willywaw print a piece of their jellyfish fabric (which I adore) for me because I didn’t need more than 18 inches which is the size of their screen for the print.

3. With the fabric pulled taught, take your staple gun and staple the fabric to the back side of the seat starting in the center of one side. I started on the side closest to me, and then put a staple in the center of the opposite side, making sure the fabric was pulled as tight as possible. I then did the same for the other two sides. Once there was one staple in each side, I worked from the center outwards to affix the fabric all the way around the seat, leaving the corners for last.

4. You may have to fiddle with the corners a little bit as there tends to be an excess of fabric in this area. Don’t hesitate to cut some of the fabric off if there is too much excess so that you can get a clean fold in the corners.

5. Then trim off any other excess fabric.

6. Place the frame back on the seat cushion (still upside down) and reattach the base to the seat cushion using the screws that you should have saved when you first detached the two pieces.

7. Flip it back to right-side-up, and voila, you’ve got a beautiful new seat.

It really couldn’t be much easier than that so if you’ve got an extra day off from work this week and want to create a new look fast, try an easy reupholstery project like this.