While I was testing the Domestic Bliss build I posted a few days ago I learned a few things. I realized that once a toddler is taught to walk and talk and is potty trained they get around the house on their own quite well; with in the confines of what ever floor some older sim put them down on since they can't do stairs yet.
I realized I needed to get the nursery on to the first floor with the Master bedroom, living room and bathroom as this is usually where the toddler get's put down but I just didn't have enough room on that lot. So I started over on a bigger lot, the 40x30 lot on Pinochle Point.
And here is the end result...
As you can see I took a different approach to the attic in this one too. I started out with gables on the roof just like I usually do but the gables just didn't look very good on this house so I tried dormers instead.
While they do look much better on the outside they do come with some drawbacks.
Sadly those side walls on the dormers have to go all the way down to the floor after they pass below the roof and that eats up some usable space inside and what's more is because the tops of those side walls are visible on the outside of the house the wall covering on them has to be siding which means you now have a wall inside the attic that has siding on it, which looks kind of weird to say the least.
You might also notice the toy box in the attic. Because a toddler often gets carried to another floor and put down I decided make sure every floor had at least one potty chair and one toy box.
Cribs and high chairs aren't accessible to a toddler with out assistance from an older sim and if said assistance is available they can just carry the toddler back to the first floor so there's no point in spreading those around.
Now lets look at the second floor...
As you can see, here we have 3 bedrooms and a bathroom and a bit of an odd looking stairway situation.
I was quite surprised when the game let me put a stairway straddled across the top of another set of stairs; I never saw that one coming but I needed to have the stairs to the attic running in that direction since I opted to use dormers instead of gables.
It looks a little weird with that gap in the wall under the attic stairs but, oh well. I can live with it and I do like the roominess of that second floor hallway with the stairs like that.
Here we are on the first floor where you can see an attached two car garage and with enough room for two more parking spaces outside the garage there's enough parking for four cars. Cars not included of course.
In the living room is, again, my favorite fireplace/TV combo and of course the master bedroom, nursery, kitchen and bathroom.
You might notice I've used just about every single wall decoration in the base game set throughout the house to ensure plenty of "Nicely Decorated" moodlets to go around.
And all of those half dome wall lamps you see throughout the house are not set with Auto-Lights. I noticed when the toddler wakes up in the middle of the night the ceiling light (which is set to Auto-Lights) doesn't come on. Now he's already in a grumpy mood needing to be changed or something and now he has the "It's Dark" moodlet to boot.
So I used those wall lamps, with intensity set to dim, as nightlights. I liked how it worked in the nursery so I placed more throughout the house where ever you might expect real people to use nightlights to find their way to the bathroom in the middle of the night or to the kitchen for a midnight snack with out shocking their sleepy eyes with the over head lights.
I realize that's meaningless to a sim grabbing a midnight snack but I just thought it looked cool when the rest of the lights go out at night there's still the dim glow of the nightlights in strategic locations.
Okay, Now let's look at the back yard...
I have that oak tree position so that only a few branches and leaves intrude in the upper part of that jungle gym.
If your sims are looking for some shade on a hot summer day this is the shady end off the pool.
But if fun in the sun is what your sim is after the other end of the pool's got plenty of sun.
You'll also notice the fire pit and the two tents where your child sim can have a friend over for a camp out/sleep over after roasting some marshmallows.
Getting the guest seem to sleep in the tent is another story. I've had the Nrass mods installed so long I don't remember if this is doable in an un-modded game but all I had to do was right-click on the guest sim and that instantly switched the active household to the guest sims household so I could just direct the guest to sleep in the tent and then switch right back to my household by right-clicking on any member of it.
Over on this side of the house is a trampoline. The adults seem to love that.
And here again is another huge basement that I've done absolutely nothing with except tile the ceiling as I did with all the ceilings on the floors above.
Now at this point I feel compelled to confess something. Before these last two builds I've never actually played any sims younger than young adult. Anytime a couple I was playing had a child I would immediately use some cheats to instantly age the infant up to at least young adult. I never wanted to deal with the children.
But when I started these last two builds I knew that to test them properly I was going to have to bite the bullet and raise a family in them and I have to say the most interesting and amusing part has been watching the toddlers run a muck.
Toddlers in real life will grab anything they can reach but sim toddlers are awesome. They never touch anything that isn't meant for them. You can't even make them touch something that's not meant for them which means you can pretty much let them have the run of the place and not have to worry.
My favorite part was when the toddler would hide in his toy box and just occasionally wave a toy out and then duck back inside. That was funny.
And as I tested and tweaked this build, paying attention to every detail (using the create-a-style tool on the edge of the deck, making sure all the wood trim matched, landscaping, etc...) this quickly became my all time favorite build. I'll definitely be playing in this one a lot in the future.
Oh, by the way, I also stuck in a couple butterfly spawners. Nothing epic, just a monarch spawner and I think the other one is the silver one. Not to give any advantage to bug collecting, really just for visual effect. It just seemed some of the flowers needed some butterflies flying around them.
Okay, now for the nuts and bolts of it....
40x30 lot built on 2400 Pinochle Point
4 bedrooms, 1 nursery, 2 bathrooms, basement, attached 2 car garage and a swimming pool.
Furnished Price $145,789
Unfurnished Price $87,530
Requires Ambitions, World Adventurer and Late Night
No store content or custom content used.
Feel free to use in your dynasty stories or mutilate to your hearts content. I really don't care what you do with it after you download. 
