Building a house.

[Gazelove]

Whether it's a starter home, a carefully planned legacy house, or a mansion - how long does it take you to make, and how meticulous are you?

Do you see yourself making the same format bathroom, bedroom, etc in many different houses?


I just spent three hours on a legacy house. It looks huge but there's a lot of empty space and only one large master bedroom, the rest of the rooms will be put in according to the kids' wants & needs. Mainly I seem to end up putting the same four-tile bathroom in almost every house. I always disliked huge maxis bathrooms - though I wouldn't want to live any of the houses I've built because if it's not the living room or kitchen, it's very cramped and not much decoration or style was put into it. My sims spend a lot less time in there than anywhere else, so I just plop down a toilet and a shower stall and call it good. No room for bathroom parties!

[joandsarah77]

I can spend hours or no time at all. All depends on who the house is for, if I feel like building and if I plan to upload it or keep it for myself and use a truck load of cc.

My legacy house I built off an Italian floor plan as my family is tongue in cheek Italian/Australian mafia. That's quite large with at least five bathrooms, separate suits for grandparents and parents, kids rooms, gym, and games room. It has a lot of arches and Italian tile and leather. Large outside entertaining area with a shed and a graveyard. They have a double garage with a few 1920 style cars and also a large basement with cells and quite a bit of armoury. Sentry bots near the front gate keep control of anyone who doesn't like them. :lol: There are also two secret passages. I spent a lot of time on that house.

[Simonut]

I love building houses, I try to make it look different, I am very much into details and colors and the surrounding landscape of the lot. I love to furnish the inside with the best items so that it will have a high or good environment score.

But also I think when building it is important that the house or Sims lot is playable, to be sure they can get around the items without getting sucked, I would say when it comes to building my lots I like for it to be perfect.

Here is just one of my homes that I build that is here on MTS just to give you an idea of my lots and how I like for them to be. And I always build with a different twist of styles. Building is fun to me I take my time when during so. :)

Click on ScreenShot for a larger view.

[Kristin76]

I dont build houses ... I redo the premade ones. So as the family gets bigger I will add on. They end up looking quite interesting. I dont have grea house building skills so I find when it do this way its more random and not symmetrical and perfect.

[frankokomando]

It depends on what mood I'm in, but it isn't uncommon for me to start building a house and when I look at the clock 4 hours had gone by. =\

[Saturnfly]

Basic starter houses don't take too long, unless I'm making the walls and floors myself. Larger, more complicated houses can take hours, but I usually spend one day building and the next day decorating, because usually once I've built it I just plonk a bunch of furniture down to be done with it.

I always have realism in mind, and I find myself making the same 3x2 or 2x3 sized bathrooms over and over again. Bathrooms are my biggest failure I think, large bathrooms, if you don't use up the space properly and meticulously, can make them look bare and large and just really fug.

Sometimes when I'm building from a plan, the building goes smoothly and doesn't take that long because it's a good, simple plan with a good use of its space.

[maxon]

If I'm building a home, I generally like it done - to be useable at least - in one sitting. That would generally be maybe three hours - an evening's work. I generally build types (like I generally make types with sims). That is to say, I will build a home to fit in its location. An example, lessee, hmmm - well, in the suburban parts of Little Carping, I've built typical English 3-bed semis. These would be family homes. Any English players on here will know what I mean. There are terraces and town houses in Carping Magna along with a number of Victorian villas since it's meant to be an old market town. Sirencester, a city, has a lot of blocks of flats (apartments) and things like converted warehouses and mills. And very run down walk ups. But there are lots of others. I generally don't build mansions though the Goths live in a big house (based on the one from TS1 though not the same). I like modern builds too. I converted a really nice two-story block of flats off here into a four story one this week. These flats:
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=480479
I really like the colours. Anyway, looks just fine as a four story block and will fit well into the posher end of Sirencester.
I often use the same lot several times in a road. And I often like to DL other people's lots because of the variety it gives.

I generally prefer community lots to build though. These are not always done in one session or even in consecutive sessions. I can go on building a community lot for months, visiting it every so often and adding a bit. I generally get the outline done with the first session though. I'm rebuilding my beach lot with the pier at the moment after the reorganisation of Little Carping (beach lots often won't move anywhere else).

Do I use the same elements? Sometimes. Like some of the others, I make small bathrooms and only 2 maximum per home - 2 1/2 at a push. Even the Goth home only has two bathrooms (and there are 14 living there at present). If you make bathrooms small, there's usually only a limited number of ways you can fit the fittings in. I tend to make bedrooms 5-6 tiles wide in order to accommodate a double bed - or at least bedrooms intended for adults. I quite like small bedrooms for kids. I tend to like challenges for home lots like building on the smallest lots (1x1. 1x2 etc). You can build a really nice little Victorian villa on a 1x3 lot - either way round.

[joandsarah77]

Do you see yourself making the same format bathroom, bedroom, etc in many different houses?

Some elements I use in a lot in my houses are half walls with the spindle bars and arches. With bathrooms I often use the uni shower and use a one or two tile glass door. I've started using the foundation stage a lot more. In large bathrooms I tend to put the tub up on a foundation stage with the glass steps. I've also started putting kid’s beds up on the foundation stage as well. I just built a house which I plan to upload and the girl’s bedroom is princes like up on a stage and the boys bedroom has one bed up on a stage and one on the floor. I nearly always in a largish house give the master bedroom an unsuit bathroom and a small nursery/sewing room.

[AlexandraSpears]

Lots of times I get bored with doing landscaping...have to be in the mood for it. But lots of times Sims really into Nature will want to buy a tree, so when they roll the want, they get trees.

[Bananas8338]

I tend to build on smaller lots (2x1 for a trailer, 2x2 for a starter home, 2x3 for a cottage farm) and I also tend to stick to smaller projects as I get overwhelmed easily. Although I love building, unless I think the house is "perfect", I'm inclined to delete it and start over. :/

[AlexandraSpears]

There's a house someone built and showed off on Simbology. I thought it really nifty. Basically this Simmer built different rooms at different elevations, I thought it really cool. Can't find it right now.

[Vladora]

Depends on the house, really. It's easy to build a boxy one-story house with no garage and a modern/adobe roof. Start adding roofs, stories, garages, porches, etc. and it gets tricky. I do tend to fall into patterns when building and decorating. The ubiquitous 3x4 bathroom, the fruit bowl or spices on the corner kitchen counter, certain types of flooring and wall coverings for certain rooms. I really do like building and decorating though. Sometimes I open up the game just to fiddle around with houses and don't mess with the Sims at all.

As for the Sims, I have started to wait awhile before buying entertainment and skilling objects until I know what the family actually wants and needs. A family of active Sims don't really need a TV, for example, and if none of the Sims want to gain creativity skill points, then they probably don't need a piano. Roll a want to dance? Then they get a stereo. And so forth. It makes the houses a bit more individualized. I recently saw a Simmer who bought a skilling/hobby object for each Sim according to their OTH, which I quite like and I think I'll be snagging that idea. Would be a good way for me to quit ignoring hobbies.

[MuletotheFoxxes]

Depends on whether or not I'm feeling inspired when it's time to give a sim a house. If not, then I'll look through the premade houses for one that I haven't used in that hood yet, and that the sim in question can afford, or I know I can alter it so they can afford it. If I am feeling inspired, I'll plop them on an empty lot of what ever size I think best for my idea, build as much as they can afford for me to do so, then make notes of what I still want to do. It sometimes takes half their adult hood to get the house exactly how we both want it in such cases, and other times it just takes a couple days. Depends on how much they started with and how elaborate my plans are.

Some of my bathrooms are almost as big as the bedrooms. They tend to have to be because I like putting full length mirrors, wardrobes, and towels in my more than utilitarian bathrooms. They're usually the master bathroom, but they can be all bathrooms if it's a mansion. In which case there might be a hot tub in the master bath.

[Peni Griffin]

I'd rather play than build, and I try to not spend more than an hour or so on any one starter home. I know I'll be tweaking it as the sims get more money and their needs change, and I like to have a couple thousand dollars in the bank to cover emergencies. Whether I use a premade or build from scratch depends on the lots available in the lot bin, where the house is, and the backstory on the family.

For instance, when I first build Drama Acres, I was in a hurry to play the six core families I'd come up with, and I had my whole complicated backstory about who they were. The idea was that the core families, the survivors of the disaster, were living high on the mountain as close as possible to their old, familiar environment and the lower part of the terrain map was a subdivision being administered on their behalf as part of the reparation settlement the Mater D Mining company made to them. The Alma Mater Foundation (source of the $500 free scholarship and the $20K handout) is partially funded by the sale of the lower lots, with the Simulated Housing Corporation doing spec housing and build-to-suit. The Simulated Housing Corporation builds spec houses taken from the lot bin. I didn't want to build six houses from scratch all at once, so the Simulated Housing Corporation built the first four houses for the core families - Tidy Tudor, Ramblin' Ranch, Just Right, and Friendly Firmament - to save me time. But I had one houseplan that I like that I'd had considerable success using in Sims1, and one family (the Hawkinses, of course) that wouldn't fit into any of the premade starter homes they could afford. So I declared that two families lived in the only houses to survive the disaster and placed two houses, one built according to my house plan and the other envisioned as a miner's cabin added onto as the family grew. When the first university graduates started moving back into the hood, I considered where each would naturally live, and what kind of house they'd live in, and built accordingly. Once you've played someone through University, and know what their lifeplan is, it's a snap to decide what kind of house they'd want to live in.

Downslope, on the flat part of the map, I planted a few premade houses around and when I move non-core families in, they almost always move into a premade house built from a Simulated Housing Company floorplan (tweaked based on my experience during the game of course). I've also plunked a number of residences into the University and Downtown maps, to fill them out, which may or may not ever get played; but if an existing house will work for a new family, I use that in preference to building a new one. I don't download lots very often, preferring to move them into the lot bin from other neighborhoods. I don't want big fancy houses; I want starters, and people who need a bigger house add on to the existing floorplan.

Generally I start with no landscaping and start adding it in according to the time and money budgets of the house in question. The Munny family has a fair amount of landscaping because they have oodles of money and a family member with a Nature OTH; the Estic family has money but no interest, so there's some hedges and flowers the gardener looks after; the Moiselle-Estic family has a small vegetable garden and a single fruit tree to supplement the grocery budget; the Ottomases have a yard with some old play equipment in it. And so on.

I do have trends. Kitchens tend to be in the fronts of houses when I build them; often the room right inside the front door. I figure this is an old living habit from the mining days - the kitchen was where all the living in the cabin was done. It's really an artifact of starting a house with only $20K: You build a big open area for cooking and socializing, a bathroom, and a bedroom with a door that can close so if the stereo is left running it doesn't wake up the sleepers. My bathrooms are almost always either three-by-three or three-by-four, with two-by-two powder rooms occasionally.

I really like porches and almost always use foundations; but a lot of my porches have no roofs because I'm only just now really getting the hang of placing roofs!

[dinucits]

I'd usually spent about 2 hours building the house and then get bored. Then on the next day I'd decorate it for an hour or so.

[ella_in_wonderland]

I guess it depends on the design of the house. Something simple like this would take an hour:
http://i1266.photobucket.com/albums/jj528/ella_underground/snapshot_5cb9bdfb_fd038ad1.jpg
Something like this may take a little longer:
http://i1266.photobucket.com/albums/jj528/ella_underground/snapshot_dcc2d52c_fcc2e6a3.jpg
And if I don't plan my houses properly I end up adding more rooms and they start looking like this:
http://i1266.photobucket.com/albums/jj528/ella_underground/snapshot_00000002_7c305af7.jpg

[maxon]

I like that first one Ella.

[TychoH]

Ella, your second one is wow. Simonut, your house is also beautiful.

My houses are always the same. Rectangle or square. A master bedroom 5x4 tiles, child bedrooms are 3x5, first bathroom is 3x2 and second bathroom 2x2. The living room are the other floor tiles in the square. The kitchen is in most houses in the living room and is made of 2 counters, 1 fridge and 1 gas-cooker.
I don't want other houses, since this really fits my style of playing, and I don't like to build. It takes maybe 5 minutes or so. Then I'm bored enough with building and just want to play with my Sims. In building I only buy the most needed furniture: bed, bath/shower, toilet, seats, book case, tv, one table with the computer of Rod Humble, kitchen furniture. Other things, but only if nescessary or wanted by my Sims, are added at later times.

[Johnny_Bravo]

Do you see yourself making the same format bathroom, bedroom, etc in many different houses?
http://cultofmac.cultofmaccom.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/nope.jpg

My bathrooms always have a different size, depends on what I'm building. It varies from 2x3 to a 5x6 bathroom + a 2x3 shower, 1x2 WC and a dormer for the tub.

[rogue_55]

I love building houses, so I don’t really pay attention to how long it takes me to build them. I’m pretty sure most of my houses take more than two hours to build though. I’m getting better and faster at building the structure of a house. It’s the interior decorating that takes the most time for me. Sometimes it might take me 20 minutes to decide which paint or wallpaper to use in a room. Most of the time I use real floor plans when I build and I like to build big luxury houses with large rooms. A standard bathroom size for me is usually 3X3. My master bathrooms sometimes end up being too big, so I will add a lounge area with a couch in some of them. I normally put some counters with one or two sinks and some mirrors in the lounge area as well. I also decorate it with plants or statues or whatever I have room for. Then I will also make 2 small enclosed rooms behind the lounge area and I will put a toilet and shower in each of them. I know it may seem like too much, but I like the way it looks. I also like it when my couples can shower at the same time when they wake up in the morning. Another common thing I do is build houses with double garages. I only put a driveway on one side inside of the garage. I like to use the other side of the garage to set up band instruments so my sims can have garage bands.

[gazania]

I built most of my houses for years. Most decidedly, none of them would make the MTS download section. I go for functionality more than form. But I often would use house plans, so at least it's functionality with SOME sort of style. :)

Building could take me anywhere from a half-hour up. Depends on the house. And most of the time, I preferred smaller lots.

Recently, I've been slacking off building (time playing the Sims has been pretty limited of late, and I now concentrate more on the characters), so I've been downloading several houses off this site. Sometimes, I wonder why I didn't do more of that earlier! :)

[AlexandraSpears]

Zandvoort...I LOVE that picture! :lol:

I too find myself using the same basic floor plan over and over again. I don't know why I have to have the kitchen on the left-hand side (from my viewpoint)...so I try to put it elsewhere if I catch myself doing it.

[iCad]

For me, with building, it really depends on my mood. Sometimes I'm in "build mode" and am really in the mood to Build Stuff. So, that's what I do. And I can get really into it, spending hours on a single lot, sometimes. Usually when I'm in "build mode," I don't actually play the game much because I get that obsessed. But sometimes I just do something "quick and dirty" and generally small, if I'm not really in the mood to build.

But whatever I build, I stick a copy of it in the lot bin so that it's there forever and ever, so I can re-use it to my heart's content, usually just changing colors inside and out. Which comes in handy when I'm not in "build mode." On the other hand, you don't want to know how big the lot bin is in my game. I'm quite sure that the majority of my game's load time is because of the mohonkin' huge lot bin. And it takes forever for it to come up when I press the "lot bin" button, too. Like, long enough to use the bathroom, grab a snack, read a few pages of a book or do some cleaning, etc. :lol:

Anyway, I build whatever strikes my fancy. I wanted to be an architect when I grew up (but that didn't pan out), so now I enjoy dinking around in CAD as a hobby (Hence, my user name.) Sometimes, what I design in CAD will get "translated" to the game, if it's a design that will work and be practical in-game, which certainly isn't always the case. Or, sometimes I'll build something that I found in one of the many floor plan books that we have lurking around here, relics from when we were going to build a real-life house instead of buying one. Or, sometimes I'll see something in an architecture magazine and try to make it work in the game. (HAH! That really doesn't always work! :lol: ) Or, sometimes I'll just draw a bunch of connected boxes on an empty lot and then try to make a not-stupid-looking roof. So yeah, definitely not always the same thing. Although I do reuse a lot, when not in "build mode."

[CherryFlight]

I have a tendency to just, like an above poster, mess with the premade Maxis houses. The most I'll do right off the bat is make sure the kitchen's laid out such that the oven can actually be opened because there is a house or two like that in the lots bin and...I was pretty baffled, to say the least. And then buy a fridge, and then a stereo because I like having music to play by and it seems to be something every sim I've played appreciates too. Then I recolor/remodel to my sim's color tastes and let their wants shape the rest.

The biggest of these was a 10,000 simoleon construction of an entirely new floor just because a sim was so determined to have a good party he rolled wants for things like a bar and a DJ booth and I just didn't have the room. But it was my fault his first party flopped, so I obliged him...good thing it was a household of four adult sims all pulling in a decent income with high-creativity paintings being sold on the side.

[maxon]

But whatever I build, I stick a copy of it in the lot bin so that it's there forever and ever, so I can re-use it to my heart's content, usually just changing colors inside and out. Which comes in handy when I'm not in "build mode." On the other hand, you don't want to know how big the lot bin is in my game. I'm quite sure that the majority of my game's load time is because of the mohonkin' huge lot bin. And it takes forever for it to come up when I press the "lot bin" button, too. Like, long enough to use the bathroom, grab a snack, read a few pages of a book or do some cleaning, etc. :lol:
I do that too but I also have a 'maxon builds' neighbourhood and go and stick them in that then delete the bin copy. When I want a lot again, I just go in there and pick it up again into the bin (replacing a copy back down at the same time). The neighbourhood uses that flat terrain.

I use the neighbourhood a lot if I'm on one of my building sprees. For example, when I was building the terraces and semis (duplex?) for Little Carping and Carping Magna and was making excessive use of Moo's lot shrinker, I built them all in a sub-hood (shopping district) of Maxon Builds. It had various advantages. The most important of which was that I could remove most of the contents of the Downloads folder temporarily - only putting in there what was needed for the builds. This is because although I need a full Downloads folder when I load Little Carping (because the lots/sims in it use a lot of the CC I have, including the neighbourhoods decorations), as long as you don't load the neighbourhood, Little Carping will not be affected by the empty Downloads folder if I load the game and work in another hood. This shortened the load times very considerably as I was using the Lot Adjuster and testing the lots were working properly - in other words going in and out of the game a lot. Saved a lot of grief.

[jamini94]

I spend a ridiculous amount of time on my homes, even the starter homes, which annoy me the most because usually my sims don't have enough money for my plans! I think all the designer magazines and shows my family watches rubbed off on me and found an outlet in sims. I just built a home that took me a long time but I love it! The only things in my houses that tend to be the same are my bathrooms and my kitchens because I tend to see those as neutral areas so none of my sims "personalities" are put into the space. But the bedrooms and other things like that? I go crazy and have color schemes, lay-out plans, matching decorations. By the time I'm finally finished with the home, I've already been playing for a good two to three hours and I haven't even accomplished anything with the sims.

[NaeShelle]

I thought I had already commented, but, my internet was apparently spotting.

Before last night I only really modified Maxis or CC houses, but, last night, after checking out a few videos on Youtube, I decided to start my newest creation in Ozarka (which is the 'hood I experiment in): A mansion cum legacy home.

Turns out I'm a very detailed builder. I spent two hours last night and an hour (so far) this morning contemplating which floors to use and how I would shape the hallways - I've never worked with a mansion that wasn't already pre-made, and, one that was meant for a huge family (which I'm definitely testing since I got the mod to work correctly!), so, it's fun trying to decide how to do the rooms (it's going to have four floors and a small "pool house" off to the side with three) and floors.

I can say though - restrooms, bedrooms and libraries are always super-sized for me. I like to add sitting areas into the restrooms and the bedrooms normally have restrooms and then a small area off to the side where one can "freshen up" and libraries always have to have room for statues and library-esque mood-boosting stuff.

And, I'm having to get use to not using foundation and using roofs - roofs typically annoy the crap out of me, so, I figure, because I don't have Seasons, I really don't need them. And, I love the look and versatility of foundations, so, I typically always use those. Now, I'm having to make it the other way around.

[M.M.A.A.]

Its good to be back to my laptop! I missed you! *Kisses laptop*

It depends on the size of the lot and the family that will live in, for example, a mansion would take up to 2 hrs+ - the + here is if I;m really tired of the game. As for normal smalll families, it should take me max. of 0.5 to 1 hr.

I always build my buildings on foundation, including homes, however, I have one I really lie, because it may be the weirdest, and its where the Hamilton's live! (Will show you the pics later)

I don't use autoroof anymore, because its cr@py.

The thing that bothers me is that, most of the bedrooms in all houses look the same, most are 5x6, so the furniture is usually in the same position, because its the only appropriate way I can place them in a bedroom that size, but in some houses I do have some plants in the bedroom.

As for wealth, rich people live in mansions in lots no larger than 3x4 or 4x3, which is large and helps in saving space.