A-Frame and Brook

Hi folks, I'm back with my A-Frame obsession driving me as strong as ever. I've been refining my overall house design to make it just big enough to hold a lot of stuff, while not so big as to get lost in. More efficient in terms of space use, while not feeling cramped. I also wanted to keep the costs down, while making the place versitile enough for easy do-it-yourself renovation. It hasn't been an easy balance to walk, let me tell you.

I also had some ideas involving yard elevation and landscaping that I wanted to explore, push my creative boundaries a bit.

This is what I came up with.

In it's default form, the house is a 2-bedroom, 1 bathroom A-Frame with my trademark open loft, and this time adding a half-basement to serve as a rec-room. Why a half-basement? There would simply be too much space that needed filling a full basement. I didn't want to create a room that was so big you got lost in it. The loft is already pushing that as it is.

The bathroom, kitchen, rec-room and loft are designed with a great deal of do-it-yourself flexibility and expandability in mind. The loft, in particular, can be walled into two or three modest children's bedrooms, along with another bathroom. Alternately, an office/library/studio combination comes to mind. The sims I have in mind for this home have a teenager who would like the loft renovated at least partly into an out-of-the-way bedroom and private bathroom, with the library/studio retained and the office moved to the former child's bedroom. There are a lot of possibilities open to new residents.

And all this for only a hair under $75,000.

Custom Content:

I used Numenor's glass panels from this package (though the update you can find there is likely backwards compatible) to close off the loft while maintaining the appearance of an open area over the solarium.

Roddyaleixo provided the invisible driveway which has inspired me on several works-in-progress, including this one.

The lively river water terrain paint was created by cyclonesue. (I only used the lively river package for this project.)

Last, and most definitely not least, I swiped a pair of terrain paints (the rocks I used as a riverbed, and the ocean foam I used to simulate rapids) from V1ND1CARE's wonderful The Vanguard clipper ship lot.

Everything else is Maxis.

Special notes:

I hope you enjoy this lot. I'm looking forward to reading your feedback (as I'm a total praise slut), criticism (I do have a broad back), and most especially your suggestions on how I might improve the aesthetics and playability of future lots and better meet the housing needs of the MTS2 community.

And last, a special thanks to LyricLee for some good advice and clarifications on taming the custom content in this project.