What are your favorite floorplans to use for starter homes?

[Coocoo girl]

A lot of times, I can't think of anything to do for my starter homes, so, most of the time, I end up making a box house.  Or buying a pre-made house, which are mostly box houses.  So, naturally, most of my sims are doomed to living in a box house with maybe one or two things sticking out until they have a little more green in their wallet.  Almost all rooms are normal boxes.  I don't think I'm a bad builder,(or a good one!lol) but I just think I'm bad at getting the actual IDEAS  if I could get ideas for making my starter house, my sims might live there until their an elder, even if they do have the money.  So, how do you usually get ideas for your starter homes/think of ideas.  And what ideas are your favorite to use?

[Pam]

Hi Coocoo girl.

I think many of our builders browse the internet for floor plans and then copies the ones he/she likes.

[Tealeaf]

I'm a very box like builder.  One thing I found that helps is looking at, and downloading, the starters in the Swap Shop of this forum.  People come up with things I would never have thought of.  I might modify a house once I start playing it, but just seeing what other people manage to do with the starting budget is inspiring.

[Twinmum]

Pam is right, many builders (me included) often look at real plans for inspiration. There is a thread here about sites with house plans. Many of these sites have the feature where you can search for a specific number of bedrooms or a style of building.

[Coocoo girl]

Ok, now there might be some hope for my sims to not live in box houses until they have some money!  (Goes off to look at thread in link)

[PolarBair]

I guess I may be in the minority then. I just think about what rooms a home needs and try to fit it all in.

One time I made a starter home that actually had and attached one car garage and a basement and managed to keep it just under 16k. The stairs to the basement had no walls or even a railing around them but hey, they were there. lol

I actually had a lot of fun playing that one. I moved in a brand new sim who made her fortune painting and the stairs to the basement found themselves with railings rather quickly, walls soon after.

In fact continually renovating this home as she got richer and richer self imployed as a painter the house didn't get bigger but it got much more atractive. So much so I never once felt compelled to move her into a bigger house anywhere even after she had several million simoleans. She was quite comfortable there.

Fixeruppers are great. Anyway. I never once tried looking online for floor plans for inspiration. Everything I build (for better or for worse) is born in my head and in my head alone.

EDIT: Just took some before and after screenshots of that starter home. Purchase price - $15,984



That's basically The Monotone at 72 Water Lily Way modified with an attached 1 car garage and a basement.



As you can see it's pretty bare inside. There aren't even any lights. lol

Now here's what it looked like after a new budding artist moved in and made her fortune self employed as an artist.







And here's the small but pleasent backyard.

[Execution]

If I need to have as much money left over as possible, I'll do kind of a studio-apartment layout. So, basically, one big room and then a little room that's the bathroom. I'll put in the furniture first and build the house around it in order to avoid accidentally making the house shell too big. If I want to expand without redoing the whole thing, I'll slowly expand my walls with the tool as I get more money. I do this all the time in legacies if I'm starting with just the 1800.

[Joria]

If I need to have as much money left over as possible, I'll do kind of a studio-apartment layout. So, basically, one big room and then a little room that's the bathroom. I'll put in the furniture first and build the house around it in order to avoid accidentally making the house shell too big. If I want to expand without redoing the whole thing, I'll slowly expand my walls with the tool as I get more money. I do this all the time in legacies if I'm starting with just the 1800.

I do the same thing!  I put in the furniture I need THEN build around it.  Usually looks like a box from the outside but I use a lot of cheap landscaping tricks to make it more attractive.  For instance, do you guys know you can use the free wood flooring outside, recolor it with bricks or tiles and voila, you've got something that looks like it's a real patio or real walk way?  It makes a box house look very different.  I did one starter that is under $10,000, (most of my starters are), that is up on stilts and has very few walls and no windows.  Windows and doors are really expensive!  Since it was going to be on the beach on a 10x15 lot, (another money saver is use really small lots!), raising it up gave me all that space underneath it for parking and a beautiful garden.  I just used fences for some of the "walls" and it worked real well.

[PolarBair]

I do the same thing!  I put in the furniture I need THEN build around it.  Usually looks like a box from the outside but I use a lot of cheap landscaping tricks to make it more attractive.  For instance, do you guys know you can use the free wood flooring outside, recolor it with bricks or tiles and voila, you've got something that looks like it's a real patio or real walk way?  It makes a box house look very different.  I did one starter that is under $10,000, (most of my starters are), that is up on stilts and has very few walls and no windows.  Windows and doors are really expensive!  Since it was going to be on the beach on a 10x15 lot, (another money saver is use really small lots!), raising it up gave me all that space underneath it for parking and a beautiful garden.  I just used fences for some of the "walls" and it worked real well.

ooh, good tip. I like that.