Down a gravel lane, just off Slatestone Road, is 22 acres of precisely cut lawn, green fields and woods, as far as the eye can see.

“Originally, there was an old house setting right out there, and right down beside the pumphouse, there was an old tobacco barn. All of this was field up and back. So I cleared it all off,” said Paul Pilson, gesturing to the edge of manicured lawn, over the gravel drive circle where grass gives way to field.

In 2002, Paul and wife Peggy built their dream home, one big enough to house family for the holidays, with room for formal and informal dining, an office, sunroom, decks and collections the Pilsons have accrued through the years.

“Paul drew up the plans for it,” said Peggy Pilson.

“It was kind of built on a plan already existing, but I just sort of swapped some of it around,” Paul Pilson added.

It’s billed as a one-of-a-kind home, not only for the acreage it sits on, but because it’s actually a modular home — a total of 4,200-square-feet and six sections of a modular home that Paul Pilson arranged to fit their needs.

“There is a gross misconception in the general public that modular homes are inferior to wood frame or stick-built, as they’re called in Beaufort County,” said Alexis Davis, a Century 21 Realtor. “Modulars are actually often superior construction to stick-built homes.”

Paul Pilson ensured that was the case when the house was built, with 6-inch walls and 5/8-inch sheetrock throughout the home, along with other features such as every other receptacle along the kitchen counter operating on one of two different circuits.

“I lived in a house like that once, if you plugged in like a microwave and something else, it would trip off, so I said we’re going to do every other receptacle, that way I don’t have to worry about that,” Paul Pilson said.

The forward thinking extends to the home’s generator, which turns on once a week to charge itself — again, so the Pilsons will have one less worry — and receptacles beneath each of the home’s 23 windows, each hooked up to a single switch in the utility room, so that come Christmas time, those electric candles in each window can be turned on and off all at the same time. The home is separated into three different heating and cooling sections, and county water runs inside the house, while a well supplies water outside use. The pumphouse is one of three neatly painted outbuildings on the property, including a separate three-car garage sitting on one side of the circular gravel drive on the back side of the house; a large shop sits on the other side of the gravel drive.

In all, the Pilsons own 46 acres — the other 24 acres are adjacent, but a separate property.

“’Course, if anybody wants it, they can have it all, if the money’s right,” Paul Pilson laughed.

Now that they’ve both retired, they said it’s time to head back to their roots just a little farther south.

“Our people are from down around Cameron/Southern Pines area, and we’d like to go back home,” Peggy Pilson said.

If the home they built is remarkable with its nine-foot ceilings, large, deep-shelved windows, a cook’s kitchen, walk-in closets in every bedroom but one, it’s made even more so by the privacy afforded by that much land, a lush carpet of green extending into the distance.

“It’s nice and quiet, and if anybody comes, they’re coming to see you,” Paul Pilson said. “I’ve enjoyed it out here.”

For more information about the Pilsons’ Alger Lane home, contact Alexis Davis at Century 21 The Realty Group, at 252-702-9697.