While waiting in another town for my missing phone to be found {long story}, I had an hour or so to kill. What do you do when Little Bit is in school and you have a free hour? Why, you go thrifting of course!

I stumbled across this sweet little boutique that was having a 50% off sale, so I scored this genuine vintage chalkboard for a mere $20! It is the perfect kid-size and has a fab worn feel to it. However, the supports that hold it in place when you open it were long gone and the top used to have a paper roll thing but it was in pretty rough shape, too.

You can see the moth-eaten, hole-filled paper in the top and the fabric support straps dangling off the bottom rung. Easy fixes, though. That’s the thing about thrifting with me…the repairs and fixes I will have to do to a find have to be pretty easy and quick. I think the term for this is “lazy thrifter”.

There are two dowel-like rods on the top and bottom of the paper roll. I started unrolling the scroll and the roll of paper was probably a good 2 feet long. Unfortunately, most of the paper looked like the above pic when I unrolled it. Boo. BUT, the very top was in pretty good condition, so I cut off the hole-y, torn part and now just this is showing…

I don’t mind the torn corner – adds character in my book. And this was my favorite part of the whole scroll thing anyway. The other pictures on it were kind of random and, well, weird. Think jungle birds, sports, and circus animals. Not sure what they were going for there.

I opened up the chalkboard to about how far I wanted the legs to stand apart. I simply took some of my aqua polka-dot ribbon from my ribbon stash and very scientifically and precisely measured out a length, cut it, and tied it off.

Easy, peasy. My absolute favorite kind of thrift makeover :)

On the backside, there is a weird half-panel of wood. So I think I’m just going to take that off and replace it with a full piece of thin wood (approximately the size of the chalkboard on the front) and then screw on a giant clip to hold large paper.

Let the toddler creativity begin!