Ms. Burre and Tim Reinke, the father of her two children and her partner at the time, had been subletting a rent-controlled apartment in Midtown Manhattan and had no desire to leave, although it was a fifth-floor walk-up without a bathroom sink and they had a baby on the way. But several months after the baby was born, their sublet ended unexpectedly.

So she and Mr. Reinke, an owner of the Blind Tiger ale house on Bleecker Street, bought a 1975 Mercedes on eBay and drove up to Beacon. They looked at 14 houses in a single day and “all were a mess,” Ms. Burre said, including the one they bought, which had dropped ceilings and was painted a hideous orange inside. As they sat on the porch that first day and watched the sun set behind the mountains, though, they realized that they were home.

Mr. Reinke stripped the acoustic tile off the ceilings, Ms. Burre’s father drove in from Ohio to help tear down the wall separating the kitchen and dining room, and together they built a new kitchen counter.

“I’d never cooked a thing in my life before I came here,” said Ms. Burre, who took on her new role with enthusiasm, not just cooking, but decorating. She bought a six-foot Waterworks tub on Craigslist, envisioning herself soaking in it while reading scripts. Never mind that there was no room for it in the bathroom; they’d figure out the plumbing later. (The tub was relegated to the basement, where it remains.)

While all of this was going on, Mr. Greene was moving his editing equipment into the house next door. He and his wife, Deanna Davis, whom he had met in film school, were similarly fed up with life in the city and needed more space because they also had a new baby.

Time passed. Both couples had a second child. And the men commuted to the city — Mr. Reinke to his bar, and Mr. Greene to an editing job at a production company — while the women stayed home, taking care of the children.