First...Yay, people like my cathedral. I was quite proud of it. I was thinking of mucking around with a copy of it to make it a more real-world kind of church as opposed to one in which the inside is designed to accommodate a bunch of Sims sitting on the floor. It'd require a bit of CC that I don't have, though... But thanks so much for the love. *heartfarts at everyone*

Next, @ Nymphy:

I've always had an interest in architecture. I wanted to be an architect when I grew up, but the math done killed me. Higher math and I are not on friendly terms. So now, I just like to draft houses using CAD (Hence, my user name) for fun. Not surprisingly, the aspect of the game that first drew me to it was indeed the building aspect. Trouble is, in many ways it's MUCH harder to build something decent-looking in the game than it is in CAD. In CAD, once you learn how to do so, you can design and draw with absolutely no constraints whatsoever, especially not if you're blithely ignoring real-world physics. But not so in Sims! Took me for-freakin'-ever to make a decent-looking roof...and roofs still confound me sometimes. I've had to abandon entire buildings because I couldn't get the roof to be not-stupid. (And for the love of God, unless you're building a very simply-shaped house, never EVER use Autoroof. The result is 100% guaranteed to be stupid.)

Anyway, for your questions, I can suggest a few things, with the proviso that I tend to build so that the result is a compromise between realism and playability, with the priority usually skewed more toward the former. I understand that, for instance, a garage-sized bathroom makes a certain amount of sense from a playing perspective, but it just completely turns off my aesthetic sense, and I refuse to create a house that has such things. I'd rather have to occasionally relieve a traffic jam using move_objects than have unrealistically gigantic bathrooms (unless it's a decadent master bath, of course) and 4-tile-wide hallways and such. My suggestions are geared toward that. So:

1) Instead of immediately trying to come up with your own original designs, which can be very daunting, try to recreate in the game as closely as you can the house you currently live in or one that you have lived in/spent a lot of time in in the past. Try to furnish it as closely to how the real house is/was furnished in terms of relative sizes of the pieces of furniture, leaving enough room for the furniture to be accessed. This will give you a feel for realistic room layouts and sizes. (Again, I know some players like to have cavernous rooms to fill with skilling objects and grand pianos and God knows what else, but as I said I prefer realism. If a family doesn't have room for the grand piano they think they need, then it's time for a bigger house. Or they just have to suck it up and go to a community lot to get their skill points. That's the way I play.) Anyway, I think it's much easier to recreate a building you're already very familiar with than to try to imagine something from scratch. If nothing else, it's good practice that you're likely to learn a lot from. If you do this sort of thing enough times, you get a feel for where various rooms "should" be and how big they should be and where it makes sense to have a run of stairs to the second floor and all that stuff. And THEN you can experiment from there and be more creative. And it doesn't have to be wasted time. Generally, ANY floor plan can become any style of house. Style is a function of external details like finishes and roof structure and what-have-you and internal details like furniture and decoration style and wall finish choices and such.

2) You might want to try your hand at making over a few Maxis houses. That way, the basic structure is already there for you; your job is simply to de-stupid that structure. (Because, trust me, ALL Maxis houses are stupid to some degree.) And some of them once de-stupid-ed might fit into your scheme for your neighborhood. (Cottages, yes? I'm thinking quaint little whitewashed houses with lots of flowers, although I know that in the UK, some of those old Georgian "cottages" are, in fact, mansions. Anyway, if the former is what you're thinking, you might want to have a look at the "Tiny Tudor" house in the lot bin, assuming that you haven't dumped all your lot bin houses. Some of the houses in Veronaville might suit you well, too.) Remodeling a house is easier than coming up with and building one from scratch, but you're likely to learn a lot from the process. Especially about roofs. (Can you tell that roofs in the game frustrate the hell out of me? I thought you could... )

3) When it comes to building not-all-the-same houses, I'd say that house plan sites (and books/magazines, if you have/can buy any. Take a look in your local library if you don't want to buy.) are a good place to go. They will usually have MANY different houses in a certain style that you can pilfer ideas from or even try to recreate verbatim, if you want to. You can always see floor plans on those sites (and you can copy the images to your hard drive that you can print out or, if you play in windowed mode, that you can look at on-screen as you build in the game) and a photo or rendering of at least the front of the house. Sometimes they give you front and/or rear elevation drawings, too, which give you an idea of what the roof and window layout and heights are supposed to look like. Of course, real houses have things like laundry and utility rooms that are not necessary in the game, but those things can usually be subverted for a different purpose or deleted entirely. I think I learned the most about building in the game by trying to recreate as best I could real-life house plans.

And...there's a lot more I could say, but this probably isn't the place. Feel free to PM me and pick my brain. In the meantime...Look! Topic!

Speaking of making over Maxis houses...Meet 120 Siena Street in Belladonna Cove, as it looked before I fatally assaulted it with a sledgehammer:

This one is plain and boring but at least not asinine-looking on the outside. And I give it points for having a side entry, since I rather like side entries. Still...I dunno...EA's attempt at what I think is supposed to be log or at least rustic-wood-siding walls just isn't doing it for me. (Must remember to finish my log wall project...) And why doesn't EA ever cover entry porches/decks? I mean, I know that weather doesn't really affect Sims, but still, it bugs me. It's a missed opportunity for a bit of realism, especially since roofs don't cost anything. (Which in itself is stupid; in real life, the roof of a house costs way more than its walls. ) Aside from that, this one's not too terrible on the outside, for a pre-made starter.

On the inside, though....

OK, you've got a 2-bath house, but you only put fixtures in one, no doubt to save money to make this a starter. Fine, but...Why, exactly, do you fixture the master bath, the one that you have to go through the bedroom to get to, rather than the family bath? Seriously, I don't get it. I mean, I know Sims generally don't care about such things, but given that the family bath is right next to the master, I just don't get the choice that was made.

That aside, I'm not feeling the big, square great room attached to the comparatively long and skinny bedroom "wing" configuration. Apparently, EA is obsessed with long and skinny rooms, at least here in Belladonna Cove. (And maybe in other neighborhoods; the other Maxis neighborhoods have long since been deleted in my game. I don't remember the layouts of any of the houses.) And on a very trivial note: Why put the trash can where EA put it when there's a perfectly good and much more logical spot at the end of the counters? Seriously, I just don't get the way EA's collective brain works sometimes. Like, let's not discuss their random closet placement policy, hmmm? Not to mention their random window placement. Speaking of which: Again, we have a house with not many windows and dark walls and floors. I don't get it.

Anyway, here's what I did to this poor thing's exterior, front and back:

On this one, I deemed it OK to make small(ish) changes to the house's footprint. Why? Because. So I made the skinny part wider by one tile and then created a further 1-tile bump-out in the middle to break up that loooooong-ass left-hand wall. This in turn better balanced the big, square great room area (which did not change in size) and reduced the Roof Boringness Factor by 4. And, as usual, I added a fireplace for roof line (and in this case front-facade) interest purposes. I altered a bit and then covered the side entry porch. Because, as I said, it needed to be done. And I slapped new siding on the sucker and added rock trim. Pretty much every house I've ever built/decorated has more than one kind of finish on its exterior, for visual interest's sake, and this one is no exception. I fenced in the back yard and added a back sundeck and patio, too, which can be accessed from either the dining area or the master bedroom. As you can see, the patio sports a sunken hot tub. I'm really not big on pools at all, but I do like to give my Sims hot tubs.

And the new floor plan, with furnishing/decorating for 4:

In real life, as a person who likes open space and natural light, I like big, open, well-lit great rooms with nice views and all that jazz. But I have to say that I don't really like them for Sims purposes. I don't know why, but I feel like I lose track of Sims in large rooms. Plus, I have this strange real-life aversion to having kitchens in full, plain view when walking in the main entry door, and this bleeds over into my Sim-houses. So, I basically bisected the original great room with a wall in order to fully separate the kitchen/dining and living areas. And the bedrooms became wider, of course. And the front one acquired a li'l bump-out too. Because I like interesting shapes like that.

As usual, green invaded the interior, a nice, pleasant, springy yellow-green along with a greeny beige. Green is my favorite color. I love all shades of it, dark to light, cool to warm, and inevitably I end up decorating with it, both in real life and in Sim-houses. I can't NOT decorate with green. Of course, in this case, green is on the outside, too.

Meanwhile, over on the bedroom side, widening the structure and reducing the size of the bathrooms meant that I could create a niche-y hall area from which the bedrooms and the family bath are accessed. It bugs me when a bedroom is directly accessed from the living room, and in the original floor plan, both of the bedroom doors opened right into the great room. DO NOT WANT! Widening the bedroom wing allowed me to fix that. And lookit! I used Maxis floor and wall tile in the bathrooms. Shocking!

And of course, all of this futzing made this one not a starter, too. Its new price tag: Around about $60,000, which could be reduced by more than 10% simply by removing the hot tub. (Dang, that's an expensive hot tub!) Anyway, next I'll try keeping a starter a starter, but it's doubtful that I'll succeed. I suck at under-$20,000 houses without using unrealistically-cheap CC...

Your remodel of the maxis houses are awesome It makes me want to remodel some houses in my game

I don't use graph paper or anything. I think about what I want to do, picture it in my head, and go from there. I also take into account number of family members, and if there are going to be babies later on.

For Riverblossom Hills, I do all my houses in the Country theme. The challenge for me is using different combinations of the Country-themed wall and floor coverings so they don't all look alike.

In Belladonna Cove, it gets interesting...the neighborhood has different sections, like Socialite, Tech, etc. I won't build a Gearhead house next to a Socialite house.

Good tips.(:
Your challenge is the exact same as mine, unfortuantly.):

This is the reason I felt in love with it: it is more closely to fantasy games I play than a real-world Cathedral as I have no interest in them - although I'd make an exception for the Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire, U.K., which is extraordinary in my opinion.
Lovefarts back. :lovestruc

Y'know, I have it in my head to try to Sim either Canterbury Cathedral or Chartres Cathedral, but it would be a massive project requiring building techniques that are quite beyond me. Salisbury is beautiful, too, though. As is Lincoln. So many pretty real-life cathedrals to choose from... *sigh*

Anyway, since this thread is on the second page again...must fix!

I felt like building something with hipped roofs, since I generally tend to favor gables. No one likes a rut, right? The French Provincial style uses steeply-pitched hipped roofs heavily, one might even say gratuitously, so that was my starting point. I didn't want to create something actually French Provincial because in order to do that right you'd need to be able to make things like sweeping curly/curved roofs and walls, and you'd need interesting roof embellishments and proper-looking wall finishes and such, none of which I have. But I did look at some pics of French Provincial-style houses in order to get some general shape/layout ideas, and then this was what I came up with. I call it "Pardon My French." Otherwise known as 164 Dahlia Drive, located in the well-off suburbs of one of my 'hoods, where the streets all have flower names.

Anyway, here she is, front and back:


I love side-entry garages. Anyway, as you can see, it has a lot more interest on the back than on the front, mostly because the garage takes up most of the front facade, and it's a big, fat square. Snooze! But the place is big, bigger than it looks from the front. It's amazing what you can fit on a 3x3 lot if you set your mind to it. It has four bedrooms (plus a study and a den, one or both of which could be used as bedrooms if needed), and three full baths. And as if that wasn't enough, it'd be fairly easy create a second story if one needed even more room. I didn't furnish it, but here's the floor plan:

I'm thinking about uploading this one, although really I have other things that I should be concentrating on preparing for upload.

Canterbury would be a pain in the ass, I feel, but should you ever decide to build a Cathedral, I wouldn't say no to Durham Cathedral with Wear flowing on its foots. (Maybe I should take back that comment "I have no interest in them". A quick glance at my library convinced me for the opposite. lol)
As for your house, please submit it for uploading. Its side-entry garage has already sold it to me.

This house came about because i can never seem to find a Beach Lot that fits my needs, I think i find one then i put it in game and i think, Its not ideal for me, So i decided to build one of my own, I'm real good at decorating but Landscaping isn't my Forte so i don't think its as good as some of the lots shown on this thread but i gave it a go and asteitcally i'm pleased with its outside apperance although i'm questioning having a helipad on the lot.


This house was orignally all blue (What was i thinking lol?), literally all blue, looked like a blue blob in neigbourhood view, but it burned my retnas after a while (Neon blue= bad idea) so i changed it to a light wood colour and i think it fits the familly better.



I Put some plants on the back to make it look a bit prettier and hide the harsh terrian you seem to get with beach lots. No way is this lot the best lot evarr made but its good for me standards and i put some effort in because I adore the family (a dad and his daughter/I'll picture them and post them when i have time).

I hope someone likes it lol.

That's a sweet little house. I like its simple shape and the windows are very pretty. And the brick is a nice choice. It adds color without being glaring. Landscaping isn't my forte, either, so yours looks good to me. The only thing I might suggest is replacing the columns holding it up with "columns" made out of walls. It'd just look a little sturdier.

As for me...no house pics, I'm afraid. I've been too darn busy making roofs.

@iCad: your Cathedral can't be described in words *_* <totally amazed>
Back of your remaked 120 Siena Street is adorable!
Give me some of your building skills, please!
I really wish my gardens/backyards looked better...

There's one of my remaked Maxis homes: it used to be this big with red siding and porch all around the home. I turned it into 2 apartments. On the photos I've shown the one in ground floor. My version named:


@down: thank you :>

I think it looks quite nice with the columns. Making 'wall columns' would make it look too boxy, IMO.

Really nice make-over, Liv. ^^

*sigh* So jealous of all these houses. My custom houses are always just square, they all look the same. More practice needed before I can post on here!

@Liv94: I really don't think you need any of my building skills. Your Maxis re-make is quite lovely, and not just because I'm a total sucker for green in all its forms. I, on the other hand, am envious of your decorating skills. Decorating and landscaping are just not my things. *sigh* It's a good thing I don't upload decorated houses.

Anyway, I've been at it again. But first: Warning: Urban-Style Building = NOT My Forte!

I've been poking at redecorating the "downtown" (which is really a shopping district) of one of my neighborhoods, trying to go for a more cohesive look in terms of building materials. I decided to go with a brick theme. (Well, except for the deco buildings, of course...unless I can recolor 'em...hmmmm...) Anyway, we'll see how far I get before I get utterly bored...

I wanted to have some residential lots with a smallish shop (to be run as a "home business") downstairs and living space for the family upstairs. I also wanted them to be on 1x2 lots so that I could put a number of copies of this building side-by-side to create a "row" kind of feeling, even though they're all detached because I can't be bothered to make them actual rowhouses. This is what I came up with:


It's certainly not the best thing ever. Probably because I made it hard on myself by going long and skinny. Still, I think it will work well enough for my purposes.

Here's the shop (set up as a grocery store, obviously) and the downstairs bedroom:


The rest of the living space upstairs:


Sorry for the zoomed-out-ness. It's the long-and-skinniness. But look! It's NOT decorated in green!

...Well, OK, it's a greeny-blue. Shut up! Anyway, I was surprised that this came out to a hair under $36,000, including the grocery-store fixtures, which are expensive. That was a nice surprise. The future owner of this place won't have to go too steeply in debt in order to buy it, since he has $16000 on hand...

Ok, so I've been stalking this thread for some time and I have to say that I love your maxis makeovers iCad! They remind of the houses you see in newer housing development blueprints. Good job everyone!

Wull, thanks to (quite a few people, actually) iCad and a few others...
I've been able to slab this together.(:


Front Of It. :D

My Favorite Room...

Back of it...(:



See more (and my awkward progress through three houses) here...

http://modthesims.info/showthread.p...5#startcomments

@iCad: Thanks man, I feel so honored
Minority of my homes are well-decorated as the flat in 'The heaven of green'- placing everything on the OMPSs and things like that are very tiring for me. But if I have some nice plants to place in the corner of the room or pictures to hang on the wall - why not?
Don't like landspacing? Nor do I I've never tried it at all. I like building not complicated bungalow houses without fundaments, this is the reason

I think your urban-style home looks quite good :D
From outside it's really lovely. I like it's look - simple and modern. Brick suits well Without high fence house wouldn't be as nice as it is now, too.

I think that indoors it could be more colourful. And decorations like plants or framed pictures would make it be non-so-severed. Personally I don't use many carpets in my sims homes (althought in my real one they're almost everywhere xD) and it's strange for me (but maybe I'll get used to? who knows...)

@Nymphy01: in front it looks nice. I like the colours of the building. They look great with sandy ground
I really really like this wooden floor, but imo in kitchen light tiles would be better.
On this picture I can see something in the desk. It's creepy
Try to use pastel colours - houses with them aren't boring or monotonous And try not to mix styles - Maxis with modern, shiny and realistic objects from your Downloads folder won't make a thing.
I looked at your thread and I think you should take more photos from the game. Your houses definetly need some decorations! Maybe potted plants? And try to search for some nice paintings - there're loads of them on the Internet.
I wish your photos would be frapsed

Good luck

I'm not a pro as you've seen, I'm just used to telling my opinion on various things I hope it would help, even a little

Ok, so I've attempted to tart up one of my legacy houses... I still think it looks a bit plain though, so any tips or suggestions would be welcolmed!

My Victorian/Georgian estate

I love it!(:



Yeah... I really need those OMSP.(:
It's just a pain to download rar files (for me). > .<

@ Nym: Very cute little house! I like the exterior finishes that you picked very well. Brick is good for desert lots, and the stuccoes you picked coordinate nicely with the the brick you picked. The structure is interestingly-shaped, as is the roof. Nice job! For the decorating...totally not my forte. I'd say that Liv94 gave you some very good advice.

Speaking of which...@Liv94: Yeah, I'm not much of a decorator, I'm afraid. And really, for that particular lot, it's meant to be owned by a particular Sim who only had a certain amount of cash-on-hand, so I didn't want to send him TOO steeply in debt. I like to decorate houses and upgrade furniture and fixtures with the money that that the family makes while I play them. But as they do that, I will definitely keep your advice in mind. Thank you.

And now...another Maxis makeover. Yay. This time it's the "City Center Lofts" from Belladonna Cove. I regret that I have no "before" pics...because I forgot to take them, but hopefully you know what it looks like.

I have to say that I hate most of EAxis's pre-made apartment buildings. For the most part, the individual apartments are stupidly-designed with tons and tons of wasted space and the decorating leaves much to be desired. But I actually like this building very much in terms of its layout and such. The individual apartments are, to me, realistically cramped; they remind me strongly of one that I lived in in NYC when I was in school. So, since I've been rather lazy about making my own apartment buildings, I've tended to stuff multiple iterations of this building into my "downtowns." The only thing I don't really like about the building is its decoration. The outside is blah and the inside is...Well, "garish" would be a polite word, I think. And, IMO, much too dark for cramped apartments.

So, here's the new exterior:

(HAH! Never mind the chair sitting out front; it must not have made it all the way to "delete" when I was removing all the furniture the building comes with. )

I changed very little on the outside. I changed the top roof trim from a drab grey concrete fence to a half-wall for matchiness and added a couple of balconies with contrasting railings. I replaced the columns that were holding up the building with "wall columns" because it just looks better/sturdier, IMO. I changed the finish from...whatever it was on the original, some sort of blue-grey corrugated material, to brick in order to go with the theme I'm working on. You can't really see it, but I got rid of the "fire escape" on the side because I think it's ugly, and I didn't replace it. I put in a pool underneath the building on one side and a mock parking area on the other, with a couple of non-functional deco cars. (I didn't know if cars owned by different playable residents on the lot would actually work, so I just went with deco for the look.) I changed the window/exterior door color and replaced the privacy windows on the side with CC ones from a completer set for the New Gear City windows. (People who make window/door completer sets are my gods, indeed. I seriously cannot build without the stuff they've made.)

Now, on to the inside. Here are the downstairs and upstairs apartments, respectively:


I changed nothing structurally. (Well, OK, I added a few half-walls and one-tile full walls here and there, usually to better separate kitchens from living areas.) Basically, I picked a color scheme for each apartment and furnished/decorated it from there. Interior decorating is not my forte, but I think this looks hella better than EA's "decorating." And when all was said and done, the rents went down across the board. I don't know why that's so because for the most part I used more expensive stuff than EA and the "square footage" of each apartment didn't change, but...whatever. I still haven't figured out how the game calculates rent. In any case, the rent range is about $400-$1650 per week now.

ETA, because I totally missed it: @Aryxa:
I think you've got a good start here, although I think it's a bit boxy. Part of the reason why I'm not fond of playing legacies is that you kind of build the house as you go along, so I've always ended up with bizarre boxy things as I've added rooms, so I can definitely understand boxiness in a legacy house. I might suggest adding some bump-outs here and there just to break up the boxiness a bit. Maybe add some bayed areas on the front or even on the side(s), depending on the floor plan? They can be a nice place to put a sofa, creating a nice sunny reading spot or what-have-you, and they add exterior interest as well. Also, if the floor plan allows, you could maybe add a balcony on the horizontal part of the second floor that would overlook the parking area in front. That would add some exterior interest as well.

I would also suggest changing the "middle" roof to a wide hipped roof. I think it would connect the two front-facing gables better than another front-facing gable, although you might have to mess with the slopes a bit to get it to look right. If you were to add a balcony, you could also make the roof cover all or part of it, if you wanted to. Finally, I might change either the window color or the exterior finish to match the windows/doors better. I'm guessing you want the oak doors/windows so that they match your interiors, and I can definitely understand that. I just don't think the grey brick with the white quoining is the best choice to go with it. Maybe some stone instead? I don't know what you have in the way of CC, but the Maxis "River Rock" wall tends to look pretty nice with oak windows. And you can always mix up your exterior finishes, too. If you can find a good combination, it can totally make your exterior.

And that's all I've got.

iCAD

I really like your colour co-ordination in the apartments.

Yeah, that's a very neat make over. I have a soft spot for that apartment block. For a premade building, I've always though it had a small sense of grittiness like I hadn't seen before. I don't know, it has a sort of industrial feeling to it... As much as you can get without custom content, of course.

Anyway. I've been toying with the idea of beginning a new, dystopian neighborhood. You know, 1984 inspired and all. Everybody wearing the same clothes, a leader, etc... I tried to build this as a sort of landmark, like the headquarters for the ruling Party.

I know it's dull, cold and completely uninteresting, but without custom content everything I can do to create a sense of threat is make it big. And geometrically simple.





I may not continue working on it, though. Buildings of this scale tend to kill my computer.

To compensate for that building's horridness, here's a house from another neighborhood (The Remake of Sinanda, which I call Sinanda 2)





I'll have to take some pictures of the garden later, it's absolutely cute.

I think the HQ building looks very imposing - especially if you got a mod of some kind to make a dark, overcast sky... I got shivers just looking at it.

@ForeverCamp

I totally agree.
For the second building those Nissun, it's fantastic! ( : I love it.

@Everyone.

Well, everyone who commented back at my pictures. Thanks for the tips. But I like the style, not everyone will blend the inside of the house towards the outside. I know in my own house that I don't.
But, I did take your thoughts into consideration ( Don't get me wrong. ), and thank you for them.

Nym

Thought I might try to get into posting a few pictures in this forum now and then.

My current hood presently has mostly multi-family housing because it isn't in full swing yet. I may have up to three families in the same household - more if they are ex-students/graduates. This is so I can get businesses started and have help with raising the spawn as none of my upper-class sims have earned their fortunes yet.

This house is planned for the mayor, although I still haven't decided on a new title for that position yet and "mayor" just isn't working for me. (Yeah, I ignore and override maxis stuff and make up my own terms a LOT.) I just made a bunch of new custom townies and want to make some playable. The mayor has a kid, so she has to live with another family in order to have help with her kid. So, while I was creating sims, I created another single mother with a kid that will either never get a job or will run a business.

That's the explanation for the size of this lot. Plenty of room for gardening. Space for a sufficient garden is not an option because the mayor is a public servant, and as such, she basically works for the Queen and must provide provisions for the royal family. There's a pond of a nice size, space for a playground for the spawn, and semi-covered stables for the horses. (My 'hood is medieval-ish/fantasy so I don't have cars or garages.) The house has 4+ bedrooms and 4 full baths so the mayor can entertain a lot without every sim jockeying for bladder relief.

So, with that bit of preamble out of the way, on with the pictures.

Front of the house.


Back of the house. The lot is only partially landscaped because I prefer to have my sims earn most of their decor as well as their furnishings. The inside is empty, but I'll leave it up to everyone's imagination how the house is designed on the inside. But I will say that the mayor and her child have their bedrooms on the third floor. The little room on the top floor (fourth floor) is for storage. The first floor has a formal dining room, and within the house there is adequate space for a music/pool table room, and space for exercise equipment.


Another view of the back of the house. Part of the castle walls are visible from some of these photos. The castle is several buildings spread over 4 or 5 lots. Can't have the descendants living outside the castle walls. This house is not within the castle walls.


Roof.


I can't think of anything else to share about the house. Lately, I have to like the outside of the house as well as the inside. I like this one, but as usual, I look forward to seeing some money coming into the house so I can fix up the outside more.