Sims 3 - The Official Building/Remodeling Showboat Thread

[Rhapsody2312]

Oh, don't know about that, there are a lot of fir trees around the Mediterranean after all.

While I agree with you there, you have to remember the Mediterranean is sub-tropical, not tropical. They have mild, rainy weather and hot, dry summers. In a tropical climate, the humidity would soon rot the softwood fir trees. (This is me being finicky, and my imagination conjuring up epic rainforests at the word "tropical"). 

[Dellena]

This is the home of Brayden and Roxann Southerland.  I’ve been playing them since they were both YA and started dating.  They used to be neighbours in the eccentric town of Moonlight Falls.  After they married and started a family, Brayden and Roxann decided to move the family to Sunset Village (my revised Sunset Valley).  They built their current home and set about raising their family - three daughters and two sons.  They’re now adults and all the children are YA except for Adam, the youngest, still a teen.  The oldest daughter, Tassy, is now married and started her own family living near the town center since she and her husband are both police officers.  Jessica and Olivia (twins) still live at home (symphonic music and science career respectively) as well as Duncan who just recently graduated high school and has started his military career.  The house is quite lively with so many people living in it along with two cats and two horses.  Oh, did I mention they’re all witches?

Here’s the front of the property:



and the back of the property:



The living area is very open plan (which I find also helps with routing.

The entryway:



Looking from the entryway to the family room:



the dining area with the kitchen behind:



master bedroom:



the girls’ room:



the loft connecting the two upstairs bedrooms and looks down over the family room:


the boys’ room:



the greenhouse behind the detached garage (with the exercise/man cave room above); there’s also a small basement under the greenhouse where mom spends time making elixers:



Top down views:

[Odinsdottir]

Gorgeous house, Dellena. I like your colours a lot.  I can see how that would be an easy floorplan to navigate.  I like the picture of the horse playing.

[Dellena]

Thanks   with a family this size, you need plenty of room for them to get around.  The house is a bit bigger than I would have liked to build but reality and sim reality are a couple different things.   I originally had a spiral stairs to the second floor but allowing only one sim to go up and down the stairs at a time made for bottlenecks at bed time.  So I adjusted and put in the double stairs.  Solved that issue nicely.

[Dellena]

So I'm excited about a little build project I've started.  First, I use Twallan's Traveller mod primarily because it cleans up some of the errors and issues WA had with packing Sims for travelling.  But an added benefit is that it allows your sim to travel to any of the custom worlds you have installed as a vacation town.  I'm not going to go into huge details on that but I'd bought Sunlit Tides a while back and really loved the beautiful island.  And it occurred to me that it would make a perfect vacation spot.  So I'm having to build a Base Camp for it and that's what I'm excited about.  It's going to be a lovely, beach side, resort with a variety of suites, a manned bar, dance floor, dinning area (I think I'll add a food register - who wants to cook on vacation?) exercise room, sauna and massage table.  The higher end suites will have their own massage tables for those romantic couples.  The beach will have a small wedding area and of course there will be a pool with a hot tub.  I'll post pictures when I'm done.    I'm using some CC, particularly some EA premium content store items.  I've decided Jessica Southerland who's just recently gotten engaged will be coming here with her fiancé to get married.  And then the honeymoon!

Update:  I have the shell built and now I'm working on the hotel rooms.  Decor will all match, as you expect from a hotel room.  So I've furnished and decorated one of the mid-size rooms - here's a teaser screenshot:



I went with mostly tile and wood floors.  Close to the beach, there will be sand which is murder on carpet.  Easier for the hotel to replace area rugs than re-carpet large areas.

[norenegonc]

Rhapsody and saltpastillen thank you so much for the kind words and incredibly detailed advice! I did not even think of some of the wonderful tiny details like sand blown by the wind before, very excited to try it out! I thought I was halfway decent with landscaping but the explanations you guys did were amazing.

Also yay! You called it wall curving hah. I know my guides can be difficult to follow so if you ever feel like chatting about the concept sometimes I would be glad to I am actually trying to work on video tutorials for all my tutorials but there are some issues with choppiness in my videos I think because of the h64 video encoder for the mp4, but I cannot seem to fix it…. yet. In any case, the wall curving here is actually quite basic, I can definitely discuss it with you if you are interested. You can do some crazy things with the idea sometimes. I linked below two of my most complicated endeavours into wall curving so you could see.

Anywho, back to what you guys wrote there were some things that I am wondering about. I also agree the flora in the front is awkward hah. My questions though are first what is freeform grouping. Also could you maybe show me an example of green on green, I am utterly lost there. I mean I understand but when I try it it looks awkward so I think I am doing it wrong. Lastly what is bougainvillea, never heard the term before. Anyway, thanks again for the wonderful suggestions!

[saltpastillen]

Also could you maybe show me an example of green on green, I am utterly lost there. I mean I understand but when I try it it looks awkward so I think I am doing it wrong. Lastly what is bougainvillea, never heard the term before. Anyway, thanks again for the wonderful suggestions!

First, bougainvillea is an ornamental/flowering tree that came with the base game (I think). Ad you can see it is very colorful.


As for what I meant with green on green. It's simply that a lot of modern garden designs use very little colorful flowers and instead focus on shape and structure while keeping the plants in a neutral green pallet.

Here are some examples:

from http://www.bodew.com


from http://bestgardendesign.net


from http://www.archidir.com

[Rhapsody2312]

Hello.

Ooooh those are such exquisite designs. I've played around with some very basic CFE work, but have never attempted arches like that. What I've tried I've learnt from the tutorials on the forum, but am always interested in learning more. I think I also just need to practice.

As for freeform, if you look at the shapes in the front of your garden, they're very rigidly placed into squares and rectangles. Freeform is often made up of of several linked shapes that aren't clearly defined. I don't have time now, but when I get home from work this afternoon I'll take a couple of screenshots of a freeform garden. The basic idea is that because there is no specific shape for the eye to focus on, it is drawn to the colours and then up to the house. I hope that makes some sense?

[Rhapsody2312]

Dellena, I love the warmth and colours you use in the interior of your houses. They're really stunning. Your family ranch is exquisite and I would love to be a sim in your game if that's typical of the houses you build for them. 

[Dellena]

Thanks, Rhapsody.   I generally decorate a house in a way that I, myself, would enjoy living there.  Also, all of my houses are built based on a real life houseplan that I've found on the internet.  Long before the Sims, I always loved looking at houseplans.  I used to buy the different houseplan magazines just to look at the different designs and think about what I might change.  When I got into Sims, it was a dream come true because now I could really build them! And furnish them and live in them!

[Odinsdottir]

So much good advice! *scribbling notes furiously!* 

[norenegonc]

Thanks saltpastillen and rhapsory for replying. I don't think I see that tree. I really need to rebuy the expansions hah. I had them for windows digital download but now I am using a mac. Which is a real bummer because I cannot use create a world now Anywho, those green on green images look really cool, going to try it out. Will let you know how it goes

[Rhapsody2312]

Introducing Magpie's Nest:

Size: 64 x 64
Price Furnished: 373,497
Price Unfurnished: 205,463
Notes: The stone bridge is decorative. Sims CANNOT walk over it. CFE, MOO and Snapping to slots cheats were used. I've test played on several different lots, with no issues relating to the cheats; however, should something necessary be unusable please let me know. Please see my gallery for the placement of the lot in Appaloosa Plains, as I did place it myself. It was built on a natural slope, so any other placement results in changes in terrain around the edges, and I would then recommend using Soften Terrain to, well, soften the terrain. The house was designed and built for Magpie, her request being for a 3bed house, with nursery, study, games room, tv lounge, kitchen with open plan dining, a basement and a pond. Oh, and some fireplaces for when she got Seasons. She also wanted stone and windows.
The original house that inspired my design is from this website: http://www.architecturaldesigns.com/contemporary-house-plan-23480jd.asp 
My thanks to Jancy whose beautiful bookshelf pattern I definitely used, and to Gheez, whose border pattern of sheep got used in the crazy teen room. Anyone else whose patterns I may have used and forgot to mention, many thanks to you too.

Features: Basement; swimming pool; waterfall and stream with stone bridge; 1st floor: great room, kitchen, dining, nursery with en suite, guest loo, breakfast nook, outdoor lounge, 2 fireplaces. 2nd floor: Master suite with en suite, teen room, guest suite, and loft area. Fireplace in master bed, balcony. 2 car garage.

More screenshots may be seen here: http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=1837

Download Link: http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,13486.0.html

[Dellena]

I love the waterfall with the fountains!  Very pretty.

[Rhapsody2312]

Hi norenegonc,

Here are a couple of screenshots of a very quickly cobbled together set of freeform garden ideas. Each area provides a focal point in a garden without stopping the eye on rigid shapes or forms.

A freeform rock garden using only rock, sand and green plants:


A freeform pond:


A freeform 'park' type garden with a path:



My apologies for the poor designs. Normally I try to take the time to organise the placement of plants and am very specific about which plants I place where. I also play with the terrain paints until I get JUST the right amount of blending, taking into consideration what the climate is, which plants grow well with others, etc. Yes, my extreme perfectionist trait kicks in a bit too often. 

Anyway, I hope this helps a little bit at least.