A precarious climb up a ladder through a hole in the floor gave Jacqueline and George Schmidt their first look at their future home.

“A friend of mine from Parsons bought this entire building in 1997, and it was a caved-in ruin,” George says. The building, which takes up a full block in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, was at one point a flour sack company. When the Schmidts ventured into the space in late 2004, the building was a dilapidated shell.

“Even though there was no floor, no anything, we said we’d take it,” Jacqueline remembers of their first visit to the 1,200-square-foot space. “We saw the brick, the open space, and the windows and were sold.” 

When they bought the space, the building was in the first stages of being converted into lofts. “Fortunately, we got there in time and told them, ‘Please don’t do anything to our space,’” Jacqueline said. The couple spent nine months couch-surfing with friends and living in temporary rentals before moving in during the spring of 2005. Still a raw space, the loft at least now had wood floors and the beginnings of a kitchen. The rest was up to the Schmidts.

Today the home serves not only as a place to live and entertain, but also as a work space for the couple. In January 2008, the two started Screech Owl Design (screechowldesign.com) to promote and sell their artistic works, including hand-drawn illustrations and prints of paintings. To accommodate their growing collection of goods, the majority of the cabinets and drawers George built serve as warehouse space for their expanding series of cards, posters, and prints.

The Schmidts met 15 years ago while Jacqueline attended Purchase College in upstate New York and George studied at Parsons The New School for Design in the city. George’s eighth-grade girlfriend happened to be in the same dance program as Jacqueline and set the two up. “It was apparently love at first sight,” says Jacqueline with a smile. Since their meeting, the two have moved around, most recently spending two years in Chicago as George finished graduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago.

When they returned to New York in the fall of 2004, they were done with renting. The couple already had a taste of homeownership since inheriting George’s great-grandparents’ Lake Michigan cottage and wanted a space of their own in Brooklyn. As the pair shopped around Greenpoint, they were disappointed. “[The homes] were really cheesy, small, and expensive,” George says. “Hollow-core doors and no windows, I would have had to tear the entire interior out.” Rather than gut an interior they didn’t like, they opted for a space with no interior at all.

With a rough foundation to work with, George, a painter, sculptor, and furniture maker, got to work fixing up the place. He built tables and cabinets and installed sliding frosted doors and white barnlike pine walls inspired by the Michigan cottage. “It took a year to get all the basics made,” Jacqueline says. “The renovations are an ongoing venture.”

A walk through the space reveals the couple’s naturalist tendencies via reused and recycled materials, a few of which are on their second, third, or even fourth life. The floating cabinets on the south-facing wall, for example, are made of a single 4×8-foot piece of particleboard George received as packaging for art supplies. He cut it up and put it back together as a set of three drawers, installing them 18 inches off the ground. He added leather pulls, received as a wedding gift, to class it up a notch.

Directly in front of the cabinet is an eight-person dining table George designed and built for Jacqueline as an anniversary present. The wood was milled from a downed cherry tree that fell on the couple’s Michigan property. Jacqueline had to wait a year and a half for the gift as the wood seasoned. An avid cook, she now calls it her favorite piece in the house.

Filled with the couple’s creations, the loft has also been helped by a few handy friends. A large bookshelf, made by George and his cousin (a welder on the Lower East Side of Manhattan), sports adjustable feet to help books stay on even footing despite a slightly slanting floor. 

Cabinets in the bedroom were designed and manufactured by George, as were the ones surrounding their teeny washer and dryer. “It was the smallest washer/dryer we could find without opting for appliances made for houseboats,” George says. 

Because the couple work in different mediums with different spatial needs, George built a workshop at the east side of the apartment to hold all his tools for furniture making as well as canvases, paints, and easels. His homemade workbench is built on wheels and features a drop leaf for when he needs extra surface space. Jacqueline works in the southwest side of the apartment from an old drafting table George scored for a few bucks in his home state of Ohio. A butcher paper roll installed below the desk is used for packing up goods for their customers.

Screech Owl Design was made possible by taking out a second mortgage on their home, and it’s already proved to be a great investment. The first illustrations Jacqueline made for a batch of postcards landed her a gig at Moomah, a children’s art space, nature school, and cafe in Manhattan.

Tracey Stewart, the founder and president of Moomah, was several months into building the children’s space when she was given the postcards. Realizing that the aesthetic of the cards complemented the other inspiration she’d already gathered, Stewart commissioned Jacqueline to bring her visions for the space to life. Jacqueline designed Moomah’s fabric, wallpaper, wrapping paper, and shadow boxes, while George built some of the furniture. “It’s muted and toned down as opposed to ‘Barney’s HERE!’” Jacqueline explains. “There is a whole philosophy at Moomah, a lifestyle mantra that is rich and interesting—the Do-It-Together projects for parents and children as a new form of do-it-yourself. Worksheets correspond to each of my drawings so that parents have a starting point for engaging with their kids and playing off the art in the space.”

After six months of commissions, Jacqueline was offered Moomah’s creative director position, a job well suited to her education and art therapy background. “It has been a beautiful collaboration since the beginning where we have shared ideas with one another,” Jacqueline says. “Tracey informed and created the Moomah aesthetic, and George and I helped her bring some of those ideas to life.” It’s a natural partnership, one that, much like their home, feels just right.

Images, top to bottom: Jacqueline tackles a sewing project with one of the fabrics that she designed for art cafe Moomah, where she works; Moomah's interior is meant to make visitors feel comfortable and creative. The sofa is covered in fabric that Jacqueline designed, which is also available as wrapping paper at moomah.com.