The Garden Palace, The retail hub

This is the farm hub for you with gardening and farming ambitions. It's heavy tuned to earning a profit I can assure you. All plants should follow. I have to get on with making and testing lots dependent on this hub lots harvest, for that reason I decided to upload now. I had the maid over before making the download, fixed all appliances and hopefully it looks quite decent. Information on income and tax for this big lot (I don't think the retail lot is included) available here. It's a Google Spreadsheet.



The main floor is only likely to be used in case you would like to be the lord of the manor for a few hours. The rest of the year you're probably stay mainly downstairs.

House and Floorplan

The house itself is a fusion between modern and traditional. The basement is in bricks in the main kitchen and living parts, white wall tiles in the pool. The main floor is in white modern render and some traditional light wooden panels. the upper floors are in traditional white wood and light patterns. Because this is a farm that needs to earn money I have focused on this house's main rooms in the basement and the garden area. The main floor is nice and precentable, while the 2 upper bedroom floors are less presentable.



Garden:

Some of the plants in garden has been grafted, meaning they now produce plants I have planted in the garden elsewhere. I will just list them as what they originally was. They have all been evolved and according to my own testing it should all follow.
It contains trees, flowers and plants: Pear 10, Lily 3, Daisy 4, Chrysanthemum 3, Blue Bells 2, Snapdragon 3, Spinach 7, Carrot 21, Lemon 8, Dragonfruit 8, Strawberry 32, Onion 10, Mushroom 2, Grapes 9, Basil 3, Parsley 5, Sage 6, Tomato 12, Bonsai Shrub 10, Potato 8, Plantain 1, Apple 14.

All the plants is organized in the backyard close to each other, around the main house's backside close to the walls. The 12 flowers are close to the house walls, while the other plants are situated in the squares in the middle, and on the sides. I didn't put any in hidden places I swear

The garden also has several fountains with a bbq and seating w/parasol. Because I HATE aliens I found the satellite in hidden objects and places in a back corner. One of my family members also has nerdy fun with something technical, in the other corner I ditched the simple rocket thing that needs to be worked on, he loved that.



The kitchen is this house's main station. It has a TV on the wall and room for a family of 7 to gather around, even if it's only 3 chairs. It's in old fashioned brick, it's likely to be full of sigaret smoke and the smell of old times cooking

Ground Floor:

Since basements has been introduced now, lets stick to calling it the ground floor perhaps.
It contains:
1. Two sidebuildings open for whatever you might like.
2. The main kitchen on the left side seen from the front, with a middle room used as a workshop with carpenter table in the house, 2 bathrooms, a main family livingroom with stereo and books. Staircase to the upstairs diningroom.
3. The pool area on the other side of the main building has it's own bathroom, and a staircase to the upstairs livingroom.
4. In the garden at the back is a house by the bbq, seating and fountains. It contains a double bedroom with a bathroom.

Main Floor:

Contains:
1. Above the kitchen is the diningroom with counters for the dishes. Outside on a balcony is a bbq with a diningtable and behind there garden benches.
2. Above the pool is the livingroom with a TV, and seating areas outside on a balcony as well. In the hallway is the main staircase to the first bedroom floor above. I also stacked a computer in a rather odd room beside it.

Upper Floor:

This is the first bedroom floor. It contains 4 bedrooms with 6 beds, and 2 big bathrooms with a fireplace and bathtub in each. Staircase to the top floor. In the middle is a big room for some more fun perhaps? I have a piano there.



The main master bedroom on the top floor is in muted colors and perhaps not that modern. Sometimes you would like to keep the old times where it matters. What you show guests is a different matter all together

Top Floor:

This is the master suite with a big top roof balcony. It your family is loaded with money you can put some nice benches here. It has a room that can be used by the family as a hole. The master consists of 3 big rooms and a middle courtyard open to the sky above.

Running a farm

All technical information I give here is dependent on my patch level at the time of upload. Original upload as april 28¨th GTW patch. I have built the lot on Oakenstead and a short export test on Oasis Springs Landgraab's lot.

To run the farm I have a few useful links for you:
SimsVIP: Great article on gardening and farming in basegame here
sims-online: Another great article on retail and the GTW expansion here

I have been running this farm with two families. These mods are listed below in the additional credits box.
1. The Finstad family was 3 adult kids and their father. In the end with scumbumbo's faster gardening mod it was a bit much and social life didn't exist. This is the family I built the farm from scratch with.
2. Then I made the Nextyear family with a slob who married an ambitious russian woman and have 5 kids, with one to go . For them I downloaded scumbumbo's evolve all plants with the faster gardening add-on for that mod. In addition to that 5 of the kids where teens and didn't go to school thanks to azoresman. The kid isn't much use anyway with the farm, and the two mods included crashed in my game. It turns out I may have used an outdated one.

I had to put these mods from scumbombo unzipped in the main mods folder without subfolders to make it work. On azoresmans's mod if the new version is the same as the old you can put that in subfolders unzipped. Without these mods this lot may be close to impossible to get to the level you need to get the needed revenue. You also have to make sure you have script mods enabled in Origin and click on the script mods option in options in the game.

Installation

This tutorial below shows how I have exported the lot and how to install it through the gallery.
1. For installation through the library though, you just download the zip file under the files fan here on this site, and unzip it straight into your tray folder. Do not use subfolders.
2. Otherwise you have to follow the tutorial video on how to install it and remember you will find it in the library
3. Remember to click Advanced in the left menu, tick to include Custom Content. That is also shown in the tutorial.



I have used moveobjects cheat or moo as it's often called on this lot. This is what I show you in the video on how to install. Without this approach you will have a mirrored installation with trees in the middle of your house. If you already know how to do that, just forget about this very distinct process

Custom Content for the house decoration

CC if you like the farm to look as it does in the pictures. This does not apply to the plants.

ShinoKCR,

Curtains and Canopies, I used the double bed canopy and the curtains as they fitted on the upper floors of the house here
Under the stairs, I used the dresser in the pool and the curtains as they fitted on the upper floors of the house here

Severinka_

Tea in the garden, I used the bench and the three limbling plants here

I hope this was all, if it is I'm amazed.

Lot Size: 50x50
Lot Price (furnished): 366.689,-
Lot Price (unfurnished): not known

Additional Credits:
Then on to the MODS of this house, thanks to them all, without them this would be so much harder.

First the important one's:

To make the most out of this massive workload you need a few things ... or so I think you do. Gardening on a farm this size is hard unless you have a massive family or some faster gardening. Both might require some mods.

Scumbumbo: EvolveAll_FasterGardening_v3a and EvolveAll_GetToWork here
Azureman: download the new file here
ClaudiaSharon: This mod might offer you a solution different than the one I chose cslargerhousehold16 here

Not so important, but still used at the time of export:
MadameButterfly: Coffee Gives More Energy-Medium Caffeine - 26 March 2015 here
Scumbumbo: DoorLocks_v1b here

I also had three of Plasticbox's light fixes for EA counters, but those have not been used in this house.