MystAngel, your post above made me smile. I certainly haven't seen any posts from you that come across as annoying or "know-it-all". 28 is mature and probably a lot of us oldies still feel 28. I have daughters who are 27 and 30 so I might seem ancient but feel the same as when I was 30 (probably a bit wiser, maybe).

Ok, I've finally taken photos and should have time tomorrow night to upload (gotta dash out now) then I probably won't have access to my PC for a couple of weeks (and really hope I can get an entry up for the next round!).
In the meantime, a pic of my Rhodes house that I decided not to go with.

Well, I do feel older and get along great with more mature people, but that feeling is something that came with depression (I've written about it earlier). General maturity of the members is probably why TS2 community attracts me more than TS3 (or, God forbid, TS4 ). But inner feeling of being mature, doesn't always imply one being mature, especially compared to someone twice the age.
And thanks, that means a lot to me. :lovestruc I sometimes think most are annoyed even before they read my posts, as soon as they see how lengthy they are.

You could totally go with it! It reminds me a little bit of mine, with that different gathered and connected materials... but it's toned down, more realistic and tasteful, while mine is deliberately overdone and stereotypical.

I'm amazed so many of you did more than one lot, so you could choose between several. It never occurred to me to try that. But there are more families than rounds, so if I wanna try each family out, I would have to use foundations more than once.

I cut it kinda close on the price....

...love me some Zappa.
- just sayin'


LOL!

@MystAngel Sorry, anything found in the catalogue is part of the $50K budget. Maybe see what else is costing money, sometimes just changing the bed and some lights can free up some more cash.

Cat, Zappa coming right up

MystAngel, I like it. It looks remarkably the same as your second version, yet worlds better. I think I might still like the first one best, but since that wasn't on the foundation, I know you can't use that one. The shape of your latest is vastly improved. It all looks fun and inviting! Great work!

Since we seem to be all playing old-school-internet-ASL, I'm 30f-ohio.

I've done nothing on my lot since my last posted pick. I've had a minor breakthrough on another project so I'm madly working at that right now. Default careers anyone?

Yes, I meant the Newmans. So I'll go get them a second bed somewhere. It might have to fit in with the bird though and then they'd have to move the bird when guests sleep over


Scottiedoag, I love the idea of the abandoned factory building! I only looked on my cellphone so I didn't see many details, but the overall view is great. It's a clever idea and one that fits well with the Rhodes, I feel.

Round 3 - Play-along - The Rhodes - "The Grass Is Greener ..."



















More "retired hippies" who have moved on with the fundamental ideals of the movement and embraced mother nature to the fullest.

Edit: CC free? Don't make me

Enjoy (or not, it's your game!)

Edit: Crap! Just imagine that somewhere during all the rebuilds I'd actually remembered to reduce the slope of the roof again!

W

Very creative! I really like the house William (whoward69).

Of course, Sir! (Great house too, by the way )

I like the allusion to "Community Spirit". With its few houses in vast landscape, these lots can look like a small outpost in the middle of nowhere!

Your entries always have an interesting twist to them, and I look forward to seeing how your approach them ... how the building style reflects these twists.

"Psst!! Here kid! Ssshhh!! here's a load of cheap white paint. You just mix this in with your dad's red paint when he's not looking. It will make it turn pink!"

You would not believe the sheer amount of white paint required to turn one can of red into pink. This was one of our freshman weed out assignments. Mix and paint your own color gradients, and then using your thousand paint chip samples, pick the 10 most evenly spaced steps and put them together on a board. We were first assigned black to white and bitched about it the entire two weeks, then to our great dismay we were given another two weeks to do white to [yellow, purple, blue, red] to black, red to black to green, brown to green, and grey to green. However, now I'm really good at the app game Blendoku so there's that I guess.

First of all, sorry I kept misspelling the last name!

That is a very pretty lot, @Gazania!

I am quite intrigued by the Dutch Colonial Revival style here - we have the Cape Dutch style, which is found all over the country, but especially in the Western Cape, where most wine farms have Cape Dutch homes and buildings, and many fishing towns also use that style (strict building regulations in some towns) - and I actually live in a Cape Dutch style flat (although the gables is not as fancy or intricate as the ones in the Western Cape).

Pics of a big one, a small one and a modern one in SA

Lovely house gazania. Ooh and I like those houses too, Petro

Thank you! I have a thing for taking a historic style and having a little fun with it.

It looks like I misread an instruction, and I need a picture of the back of the LOT, not just the house. Fixed!

I had to be careful with the definition of Dutch Colonial Revival, since some of the styles do incorporate the roofs that justpetro showed. (Lovely roofs, by the way.) There's a little variety in this style.

They are impressive, Karen Lorraine, and the detail on the gables are quite varied and very interesting - they almost always have black thatched roofs, and they are almost always white.

@Gazania - these are Cape Dutch - this style has been around for centuries here, I think the so-called modern ones are just cheaper to build The first one was build in the early 1700's and they are still built in more or less the same way, really, there are architects specializing in plans here.

Cool house, gazania. Nice to have a house based on an historic style. I'm glad you mentioned a mirror - you had me confused!
How much?

gazania, nothing cheaty about that roof! The Maxis dormers are practically useless. (Except when you need that higher than top level trick.) I love your little pavilion! The ribbon wallpaper is perfect, and I never thought to do that!

Industrial Design! Product design in laymans terms, but I really enjoy the game design/theory aspects and also task analysis/ergonomics. I went to the University of Cincinnati (sadly, we've slipped to the #2 program since I graduated). I have had co-ops (like internships, but paid and for school credit) with Hasbro Games and Swimways, and was a finalist in an international LEGO design challenge. As part of the contest, the 5 finalists were brought to LEGO HQ in Denmark, and I got to spend 6 weeks traveling Europe. I stayed with HP and Delphy for a few nights! She made a sign for their door so I could find them, and I put it into my travel scrapbook. Nysha/Emma also came over for dinner the first night.

49,996. I nearly forgot to put that picture in there ... I must have done it while you were looking at them. I like to put the price in with a closeup of the house. If I have only 17 - 18 pictures, I like to put all of 'em to good use!

Loving those roofs justpetro is showing us! There was a variety of Dutch Colonial Revival urban buildings here that had roofs similar to those. Sorry for the lazy link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch...al_architecture

The roofing in general for these houses is just so pretty.

@gazania - I love your story

Thanks for the link - those are really different from here in many ways - as I said, they are almost always painted white, I have seen some that are painted light grey or beige here and there - never brick or clapboard though, although there may be some sandstone ones in the Karoo (there is a small church with gables and sandstone is used often in that areas there). They are boxes - very ornamental boxes at times, but they are boxes nevertheless I really find this revival very interesting.

Update: Scores should be up tomorrow night. My tomorrow that is. It's currently 6.18pm Monday here.

gazania stop worrying -- your house is beautiful! I would be delighted to build a house like that -- even if the judges gave it "nul points". Have confidence in yourself -- you really are a very talented builder.

In my country nearly all houses built up to the early 1960s had a fireplace. Before the 20th century it was normal to have a fireplace in every public room and every bedroom. It was how you heated the house and got hot water! In many cases today the fireplaces have been removed or covered over, but the chimneys usually remain. Often the number of chimneys is the most obvious difference between genuinely old houses, and modern "traditional" ones. When building to a budget in the Sims fireplaces can be a problem because they are so expensive. Especially in contests! That is why I consider all my entries to be new build (built by Jones & Moltke Construction (Veronaville) Ltd.). Coming from Veronaville, they have a natural empathy with traditional. But they don't always put in fireplaces.

I see Cassie has a job (though I presume she works from her home office too). Did you manage to find her a job that lets her be home when Molly gets back from school, or does she have some sort of "childcare" in place? In my case, the constraint of not being able to take a job was one of the things that made playing the Elliotts' first week so difficult. I suppose I could have given them some extra money to live on till Joe got paid for his first website (=novel), but I liked to make the §35,000 not only the limit for the house, but to make it all of their available funds when they moved in. (I say I don't play challenges, but I suppose I'm always making little challenges for myself.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I might have some idea! At young Master/Miss Elliott's age, I was using enamel paints to paint Airfix kits and plastic figures. With an artist mother and a tight budget (what's new?), I initially used a little set of six Airfix paints. I remember the Airfix recommendation for [white] skin colour was 15 parts white, 1 part red and 1 part yellow. I used to just judge it roughly and mix them on the brush, so for that colour I would dip the brush in the white paint, then dip just the tip of it in the yellow, and finally in the red. In that order, because I soon learned that small quantities of a light colour in a darker colour pot did not significantly contaminate the darker colour. So yes, I guessed it would take a lot more white than red. That's why I gave William's child a load of cheap white paint!

A more recent red to pink conversion are these shorts by Simphany.com:
I made the pink ones by bleeding some of the red out of the original Simphany.com ones, using the Photo Editor that came with Microsoft Office 97. I've had it for 20 years, and it's a much simpler piece of software than Photoshop. But I can't remember exactly how I did it. I think I may have selected red and then reduced the Gamma (whatever that is -- maybe you'll know Phaenoh!). Thanks Andrew and Julian for modelling those shorts for me.

Anyway, I suppose it's time I got back to the task in hand -- of building a house for the Lamberts. It's making slow but, I hope, steady progress.