Restoring Vintage Theater Seats

Giving New Life To Old Pieces

Sometimes new is good. For example, I like new shoes. I mean who doesn’t like new shoes! I have a closet full of them! But, there is just something about rescuing a vintage piece and giving it new life that really brings me joy. I love that their stories are being told again in new ways like the ones that are contained within the walls of my almost 100 year old home, or the furniture cart we restored from a North Carolina furniture warehouse and it is now a coffee table, or now this fun set of vintage theater seats. It’s just fun to see it come to life again!

When I purchased this set of vintage theater seats, I knew that I would not be leaving them “as is”. My plan was to restore them by painting them with a combination of chalk paint/spray paint and to create a “stained” look on the seat backs and arms.

The first step in the process was to clean the seats of any unwanted material before painting. I think even the gum was vintage,but “yuck”, that had to go!

I started by painting the cushions of the seats with a Folk Art French Linen chalk paint. Yes, I painted fabric with chalk paint. These theater seats are mostly going to be decorative. After painting with the chalk paint, I used a Folk Art Dark Antiquing Wax used for aging chalk paint and rubbed it over the seats.

After I finished painting the cushions it was on to the frame, arms, and back of the seats. I made sure to cover and protect the seats that I had painted with brown painters paper and Frog Tape. Painters paper is great to keep on hand for any craft project or even roll some out for the kids to color on!

For this step, I used Rustoleum Chalked Spray Paint in Chiffon Cream. I gave everything two good coats and gave them plenty of time(1-2 hours) between coats. Chalk paint dries very quickly and it is very forgiving! Some of the many reasons why I love chalk paint!

I got a little excited and anxious to see how it was going to look. I decided to go ahead and start on the antiquing process. Again, I used the Folk Art Dark Antique Wax to achieve this look. I started by brushing it on and rubbing off the excess. I made sure to rub in the direction of wood grain and not in circles. This helped to achieve that “stained” look I was going for!

I really love how restoring these vintage theater seats turned out! After trying it with three seats, I ended up using only two seats. It just fit better in the space with two.

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I love that it has new life even with a completely different look. It’s the perfect little spot for guests to drop their purses or bags, for my littles to crawl up into the seats and read a book, or just to be a piece that we love to talk about where it’s been in our quaint town’s history.

What about you? What pieces have you rescued and given new life to lately? Do you have something that you wonder if it is worth redoing or repurposing? I would love to see your projects! Tell me in the comments some of your AMAZING ideas and creations!! I love to hear from you!

*Disclosure: Affiliate links are included in this post. https://harvestinghome.com/disclosure-photo-usage-policy/

Products used to complete this project:

Folk Art Chalk Paint French Linen amzn.to/3xUXvDw

Folk Art Dark Antiquing Wax https://amzn.to/3zXL1Nr

Rustoleum Chalked Spray Paint French Linen https://amzn.to/3h8hp7p

Brown Painters Paper https://amzn.to/2TcObfB

Frog Tape https://amzn.to/3h7uu0x