The Official Building/Remodeling Showboat Thread

[Joria]

Sorry for the multiple posts. Catching up.

I got a wild hair, (hare?), today and decided I'd fool around with elevation.  I'm still not happy but have learned quite a bit, mostly that when EA says you can't build above a certain height, they mean it.

I started out with level two colums, put down a floor and built up walls.  So my first floor basic house looked like this:



I thought, "well, why not see how high I can go?"  But first I took a shot of the interior.  As you can see, it is a simple "starter" type home.  The stairway in the center kind of bothers me as it was hard to wrap my RL head around the openess.  I could just feel the drafts coming up those stairs which are quite long.  The stairs on the side go to the area that will be a wrap around fruit and vegetable garden, up high so it also forms walls/fencing.  My Sims like their seclusion so they added a gated front area and locked it.  The paper boy/girl has fits. hehehe



I didn't bother painting the outside.  This was only an experiment and I knew I wouldn't keep more than two stories but this is how high it went.  I found Three finished stories and a top, flat area that could be used as a roof top patio was it.  If you count the ground "floor" it's four "stories" and that's all .



You can clearly see the four levels here.  Now, what I haven't tried, and think I will later, is using the tall column idea to just see if I can get the levels higher.  I'll post pictures of the finished house and lot when done.  For now I have to get back to my challenges.  If anyone else tries going as high as they can, I'd love to hear what they tried and what they learned.  Oh, and of course, we can also go down about 3 levels, (maybe 4), for a total of 8 levels.  Why would you need it?  Well, you probably wouldn't but it was fun stretching to see what could be done.  There is only minimal landscaping at this point so ignore the barreness.

[Twinmum]

So I finished the house I was working on and am quite pleased with the final result. I was all ready to upload it to the exchange when I hit a snag. I sent my my build test sim in to run through the house to make sure everything looks and works right. I found a few issues that I fixed like ceiling tiles on the upper level and hampers in the bathrooms. Mainly little things, then I found she got a negative moodlet for an unfinished room in the main living area. I've scoured the whole room and narrowed the problem down to the stairs. I have a feeling that it is because I used a cheat to get the desired stair effect. Now I don't know what to do, do I still upload it as is and add a note about the moodlet. I did build the house for my own pleasure and I can probably live with the moodlet, but others may not be able to. My daughter suggested to build a wall and enclose the top of the stairs which I tried - made a 2 tile wide hall along the front of the top of the stairs. It fixed the moodlet problem, but it takes a chunk out of the living space and gives a closed in feeling that I'm not sure I like.
Any suggestions?

This is the front of the house - I've done a bit more landscaping and added the driveway


This is the rear of the house


The upper level


The lower level


This is the main living area, I don't really want to close it in.


Norma

[TommyT]

Very nice!  Please spill the beans on how you created the slope, I've been racking my brain with no results

[Twinmum]

Do you mean the slope of the land? I just placed a 40 x 40 block on Sunnyside Blvd in SV and built on the natural slope. The lower level walls are foundation walls on the high side, but change into normal walls where the ground is lower.

[TommyT]

Hmm gonna give it a whirl.

[Telsey]

Very nice Twinmom. 

[Twinmum]

I uploaded my house to the exchange with a brief note about the moodlet. Yikes what an experience. I tried to add a note about placement of the house and the moodlet in the description, but it was too long. So I thought I'd make a blog post and then just direct people to it from the description. Has anyone used the blog feature on the main site? Seems you are limited there too as to how much you can put in one entry. I ended up having to make a couple of very short posts just to get basic info there. I think next time I build a house, if it has any quirks, i will just keep it for personal use lol

Norma

[TommyT]

Victory!  Thanks to Twinmum's tips I was able to raise the terrain on the front of a pre-set lot and and make the front of the house the 'main level' and the back of the house the 'lower level' - even though the back of the house is actually the unaltered part of the lot.  This is obviously just a trial house, just wanted to see if I could do it.  expect something amazing very soon

[Twinmum]

Looking forward to see what you come up with Tommy. Fancy me teaching the builder something lol

[TommyT]

I still remember that little beach house/cottage you put up about a month ago   It's exciting seeing how many of our members are getting into building!