About 12 years ago we considered building a new home in the Berryville area.  We moved to Berryville in 1989 when Alice retired from the Navy and Carole retired from the company she owned back in the Washington, DC area.  We bought a wonderful old farmhouse (built in 1900), and proceeded to renovate it several times along the way.  Currently (2007) it has about 6,600 square feet (see the picture above) -- for just the two of us and all our critters!  And though we had many more acres to begin with, we have sold a bunch, carved off some for a rental house, and now have about 75 acres remaining on this part of the property, not including the two ponds and land on "the other side of the lane" or the land that is no longer contiguous because of the pieces we've sold.

We had seen an ad (if memory serves correctly, it was in one of the airline magazines -- probably United) that described a TOPSIDER home.  We investigated it, we requested information, Carole sat down with her trusty paper and pen and did a sketch of what we thought would be fun to build, and even got a quote.  The price was reasonable, and the Topsider concept was exciting,  We had an option on some property between Berryville and Eureka Springs with the proverbial "drop dead gorgeous" view, and that was where we thought this new home would be--it has great vistas and dramatic slopes, which meant it would be a perfect location for a Topsider home. 

Someone once told Carole that the three largest words in the dictionary are AND, IF, and BUT.  BUT we took some lawn chairs and sat at two locations within this large acreage, either of which would have been "perfect."   AND the noise from Highway 62 about two miles away was distracting, ever-present, and extremely loud.  So IF we thought about building a new home it would just have to be on different property.  And we shelved the idea, to be re-visited later.

"Later" has arrived!

And now Carole will give you "the rest of the story" --


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