Basement Remodel

Comfort Defined

An ill-defined basement trades its dull interior for cozy niches and period details to become a warm, woodsy retreat.

For new empty nesters in Bloomington, Minnesota, transforming their lifeless basement—an ungainly space that was neither designed for function nor decorated for comfort—into a cozy hideaway seemed like the perfect way to celebrate the start of a new chapter in their lives. They envisioned a comfortable, well-defined space with quaint niches and subtle period details to reflect the white-trimmed Colonial Revival architecture of the rest of their 25-year-old house, and they called on architects Petra Schwartze and Dan Nepp of TEA2 Architects to make it happen.