Before and after: our New Orleans apartment dining room makeover on a budget

Welcome in to our apartment! You can read our apartment love story here and see how I designed the kitchen on a budget here. Today I'll share how I designed and problem-solved the dining area. Our apartment is teeny tiny, but well laid out, so it functions surprisingly well (layout is always far more important than square feet!). Still, it's the smallest "room" in the apartment and when we first moved in, there were many issues with the space:

• lack of storage

• broken light fixture

• uncovered windows

• exposed circuit box

• and we also needed to figure out how to seat four people at a table

My very first step (probably because it was the most fun) was hunting for the right furniture. When you're designing a small space, a round table is important for several reasons: 1) rounded shapes help the eye travel more smoothly in a small area, reducing the visual choppiness and clutter; 2) no sharp corners to jab people trying to squeeze past each other; and 3) you can get away with adding more chairs to a round table than a square. We found the sweetest set at one of my favorite vintage stores.

This set is a 1950s game table intended for a side room, so the scale was much smaller than standard dining room furniture. I'm sure some wild games of bridge went down 'round this very table. I absolutely love the pretty walnut color, the chair backs shaped like violins (my favorite instrument), and the style that I could imagine in a tiny French cottage. Also, the carved seats are somehow wildly comfortable. I prefer vintage pieces because they're almost always higher quality and better constructed, and you just can't beat the character. Almost all the apartment furniture is secondhand, found so easily and quickly that it felt like clear providence.

The table proved to be too large, but we had an old patio table with a base that I liked, so I ordered a basic black tabletop in the diameter we needed and secured it with a piece of rug gripper. My favorite affordable, high-quality tablecloth was a perfect topper (these also make a great gift!). I never tire of sitting here to drink hot morning coffee in that dreamy light.

I also needed to cover the windows for privacy, safety, and insulation. In a small space like this, a classic linen Roman shade looks polished without taking up valuable wall or floor space. You can also fit chairs more closely to the walls if there aren't any curtains. I ended up loving these well-priced cordless blackout shades so much that we used the same ones when it was time to replace the old shades at our house.

For storage, I reused one of my favorite budget tricks from our first newlywed house, a shotgun double in Mid-City. These chrome racks have an appealing industrial vibe and the charm of open shelving with some reflectivity to bounce light around. And they're way less expensive than cabinets. They come in every width and height under the sun—this one fit the space like a glove and concealed the circuit box without blocking access.

Open shelving can very quickly get messy and visually chaotic, so employ the magic of uniformity and monochrome. Matching black baskets conceal tons of stuff like paper plates, coffee, pantry items, and plastic cups; setting them on the lowest shelves keeps the visual weight in a natural order. I intentionally chose dishes, mixing bowls, and pots in the same color to blend with each other and the wall. (This pot set is amazing, by the way—another excellent find that makes a great gift). My favorite French glasses and other clear glass keep things light.

To make full use of every inch, look high and low: I added a wine rack to the top shelf (we also use it for water bottles and our Hermes parade cups) and tucked under a big pretty basket and some pottery jugs for more concealed storage. Most of these items here are thrifted—in fact, all my favorite glass mixing bowls are secondhand. The blue cross-stitch art was made by my Granny and carries over the kitchen color. I like that it feels almost like a secret window.

This little room is packed with sentimental value. On the windowsill: candlesticks from my grandparents (they tie in with other brass accents in the space). I brought home the brass pelican from a brocante in Normandy, France, because it's a classic symbol of both the Church, faith, and Louisiana. Tucked through the chrome rack are special objects like this bell from the parade krewe my grandfather used to ride with, vintage holy cards from Paris, a wooden bowl that we received for our wedding.

Finally, I swapped the broken light fixture for my favorite always-works style: a pendant globe. Just as it does in the kitchen, a globe fixture adds another round shape to help the eye roll smoothly through the space and fits with any architectural era or decor style. That's one of my own abstract paintings on the wall to inject a little modern color. Every room benefits from subtle juxtapositions of style eras.

Thanks for coming by! Come again soon so we can sit here and talk about lunch and dinner while we eat breakfast.

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