Three apartments, three or four moves each.

The brief

Two people, four years in the apartment, everything owned and nothing new coming. The living room felt dark even though it faced the street. The bedroom felt like a hallway with a bed in it, because that's what a railroad is. The ask: make it feel like a home we chose, without buying anything.

The moves

1. Turn the sofa to face the window instead of the television, and center the rug under it. The television moves to the short wall on the low bookcase, where it stops being the room's altar.
2. Pull the tall bookcase out of the pass-through, where it narrowed the walk to the bedroom, and set it at the doorway as a divider. The living room gains a wall; the bedroom gains a door it never had.
3. Move the bed from the middle of the bedroom to the wall under the window. One nightstand stays; the other goes to the entry as a landing spot for keys and mail.
4. Take everything off the walls and put half of it back up, in two groups instead of eleven singles.

The brief

A couple who had lived there two years and hosted exactly once. Good furniture, mostly secondhand: a solid sofa, a Marketplace armchair, a real wood dining table. The room had two windows' worth of corner light and nothing in it that used the light. The ask: a place people want to stay for dinner.

The moves

1. Move the dining table off the wall into the corner where the two windows meet. Dinner happens in the best light in the apartment; the two chairs from the bedroom desk make it four seats.
2. Bring the sofa off the window wall so it stops blocking the light, and set it with its back to the dining area. The one room now reads as two.
3. New: a rug sized to the sofa, not the room; a floor lamp and a table lamp so the ceiling fixture can stay off; curtains hung at the ceiling line rather than the window frame, which adds a foot of height to the room.
4. The Marketplace armchair moves to the window corner with the floor lamp. It was a spare chair; it becomes the reading spot.

What was bought

Wool flatweave rug, 8×10

$780

Floor lamp and table lamp

$510

Linen curtains, 4 panels, and rods

$560

Side table, secondhand

$240

Framing for existing prints

$320

The brief

One person, relocated for work, moved in with a mattress and two boxes. A two-year lease and no interest in spending weekends in furniture stores. The apartment had a lot of glass and no texture at all. The ask: make it feel like somewhere, not a rental listing, and be done in a month.

The moves

1. Don't push the sofa against the window. Float it on a large rug facing a low, long bookcase, so the living room is a room within the room and the view becomes the backdrop instead of the whole point.
2. A round dining table for four at the kitchen end. A round table doesn't fight a galley kitchen the way a rectangle does, and it seats a fifth person when it has to.
3. In the bedroom, the bed goes on the long wall with an upholstered headboard, and a single deep wardrobe replaces the developer's shallow closet as the place clothes actually live.
4. Texture where new construction has none: floor-to-ceiling linen curtains, wool underfoot, oak and cane, and one dark wall behind the bed, painted with the landlord's OK.

What was bought

Sofa

$2,400

Living room rug, 9×12

$900

Low bookcase, oak

$1,100

Round dining table and four chairs

$1,810

Bed frame and headboard

$1,300

Wardrobe

$980

Curtains and rods, living and bedroom

$1,400

Lighting: two floor lamps, two table lamps

$780

Bedroom rug, nightstands

$970

Art, frames, textiles, objects

$520

Mattress supplied by the client. Paint and painter not included in the shopping budget.