Several years back Gabe Cohen and Jolie Signorile caught wind that a beat-up houseboat was for sale. Desperate for a weekend ticket out of the city, the two, cofounders of Brooklyn design company Fredericks & Mae, recruited six friends and pooled their cash. Two months later the group stood on the roof of their new purchase as a hired tug pulled it from Saugerties, New York, down the Hudson to Rockaway Beach, Queens, where it’s now permanently docked.

Built as a party boat (with wine fridge, Jacuzzi, and washer/dryer) for a Goldman Sachs exec, it had later been stripped of its frills and used as a crash pad for the winter crew of the Clearwater, the historic Hudson River sloop. Gabe, Jolie, and gang, many of whom met as students at Oberlin College, came to the project prepped for teamwork. They ripped out the mildewed carpets, painted every surface, and furnished the boat with Craigslist finds and Fredericks & Mae’s own games and accessories (that’s one of their windsocks catching the breeze on the roof). It’s been more of an adventure than any of them could have predicted, but also more fun. And it’s only a subway ride away.

Photography by Douglas Lyle Thompson for Remodelista, unless noted.

Above: The houseboat, a Sundance House Barge built in 1986 on Long Island, is moored on a dock in the Rockaways, in Queens, a few blocks from the beach—and the A train. Hurricane Sandy hit just after the group’s first summer on the houseboat, and though much of the area was ravaged, the boat rose with the tides and required only patching (but didn’t have electricity for eight months).

Above: A curtained sliding glass door leads to the entry hung with a fishing trap. That’s one of Todd Heim’s linen towels on the chair. (See our post on the Summer’s Best Beach Towels for a better look and more examples.)

Above: The entry’s built-in sofa.

Above: All eight owners of the boat pitched in to paint, reupholster cushions, and decorate the walls—and the work continues. During last winter’s deep freeze, the pipes burst. “It’s called boat for ‘bust out another thousand,'” says Jolie.

Above: A built-in daybed (with firewood storage) and a woodstove in the living room.