A few months ago, I ordered the Dayna Side Chairs from Ballard Designs for our casual dining space. The chairs came with a white seat, but I knew that with two young children and these chairs being the primary chairs we would eat in I needed a more durable fabric, preferable something that we could wipe off.

I ended up choosing Kovi Fabrics Indoor Outdoor Brown Leather Grain fabric. The darker color added a necessary warmth to the space (our built-ins, walls trim and drapes are all white) and the fabric is easy to wipe off!

BEFORE

You can see how easily these chairs stained after just a couple of months of having them!

AFTER

The Ballard Designs website outlines pretty simple instructions for reupholstering the chairs yourself. We roughly followed that guide, but thankfully my in-laws had experience in reupholstering fabric and they had all the tools required. I am so thankful they were able to help! That being said, this would be a good first reupholstering project.

Tools Needed to Reupholster the Dayna Side Chair

To reupholster these chairs you need:

• Fabric that you want to use (Ballard Designs suggests 1/2 yard per chair seat)
• Dayna Side Chair (or other chair with a removable seat)
• Electric or manual staple gun and staples
• Scissors
• Screwdriver

While I love the Kovi fabric we chose to use for our chairs, it is a thicker fabric. The thickness of the fabric made it a little bit more challenging to fold around the corners of the chairs, but we were still able to make it work. I think a thinner fabric would be even easier to use! The entire project took about 5 hours for 6 chairs (with a lunch break included).