For Her Next Production ... GHENT, N.Y. - There's the everyday juggling of work and chores that most of us do, and then there's the amped-up kind that Carrie Schoenfeld - artist, writer, inventor - thrives on. Take her most recent stretch of activities. While she was producing and directing her first independent film, a sci-fi confection she wrote called "Asockalypse!," she and her husband, Fiore Guglielmi, were building what they hoped would be a sustainable, modern and economical second home in the Hudson Valley. Then, midmovie and midconstruction, another inspiration hit. So she paused to work up the blueprints for a magnetic turbine generator that she envisioned as a kind of holy grail of clean energy. Forget for a moment that she lacks an engineering degree. "I'm just an old environmental hippie," she said. And please don't call it a perpetual-motion machine. Not surprisingly, Ms. Schoenfeld, 57, was raised in a world where almost anything seemed possible. As a child, she watched all sorts of huge and splashy theatrical productions take shape: "A Chorus Line," "Cats" and "Pippin," to name just a few. For decades, her father, Gerald Schoenfeld, who died in 2008, was chairman of the powerful Shubert Organization and helped to revive Broadway - its bottom line and the neighborhood. Ms. Schoenfeld, his only child, often tagged along on his theater rounds. During rehearsals, he would ask her opinion on which scenes or numbers could be cut without hurting the story. He and her mother, Pat, sat on either side of her at the opening of "Hair" in 1968, shielding their 12-year-old's eyes during the nude scene. Mr. Guglielmi, 63, grew up on a farm in Italy, one of six children. And while Ms. Schoenfeld is chatty and a bit eccentric, he is reserved and practical, a sales associate in the Bergdorf Goodman shoe department. The couple met two decades ago at a Club Med in Turks and Caicos, while her two children from her first marriage were at summer camp, and married in 1999. Now, with the children grown, they wanted a country home where they could entertain friends and extended family. She needed a bright studio for painting, sculpturing and writing plays, movies and songs. And he insisted on a cool, well-ventilated sub-basement for making wine. Keeping the construction on schedule and on budget was a challenge, particularly when Ms. Schoenfeld was making a movie. Still, once a week they piled into a car with their architect, Caleb Mulvena, of Studio Mapos in Manhattan, and made the five-hour round trip to check on progress. Mr. Mulvena was the second architect they hired. They were hoping to keep the budget under $500,000, they told him, not counting the land. But after reviewing the plans, he said, "Guys, I'm looking at a $5 million dollar house here. How about we turn the dial down a little? They settled on a 3,500-square-foot four-story home with a modest footprint. Much of the interior is concrete, including the floors. The house faces west for a panoramic view of the Catskills; the southern exterior is photovoltaic, and the heat and cooling source is geothermal. "I love this house because there is no fossil fuel," Ms. Schoenfeld said. We're on the grid, but the meter spins backwards like crazy, especially when there's snow reflecting off the solar panels. As is often the case, however, not everything went as planned. One night, all the appliances and the pricey fixtures (about $60,000 worth) disappeared. Whoever took them knew enough to bring along the equipment required to lift them out of the subbasement, which at the time had no stairs. For this and other reasons, they didn't meet their budget: the final cost was more than double the original estimate. The turbine, which Ms. Schoenfeld built with an engineering professor and four of his students at the University of Hartford, her alma mater, didn't end up working, either. But she isn't easily discouraged. Whenever she needs to replenish her reserves, she heads to the house, where "the view never fails to take my breath away," she said. And she already has another prototype under way. She is also writing a screenplay: a dark comedy about building a house in the country.