God help me, I still love the colours and the warm textures.
I feel like it would look perfect (more cabiny if it was one story shorter.
I like houses with multiple gables.

p.s. When I first saw this post, I thought it read "Nordic Slave Church." :D

I think I'll play about with it a bit more and see how it turns out.
Sticking to the Nordic theme, I've altered my original attempt recreating Villa Stranheim, which was deemed far too grandly proportioned and so I abandoned it until I recently had a breakthrough with what to do with it. I much prefer it now that I've demolished a large wing of it and replaced said wing with balconies and a sunroom, and also redone the tower roof:

Volvenom has already christened this version 'Villa Fjellheim'.

I'm always a little surprised by what items EAxis chose to copy exactly between TS2 and TS3... I wouldn't have thought that the rooftop dragon would have made the cut! But it looks great there, it really sets off the rooflines on what's a pretty cool building!

I really like the "Rocky Mountain Dream Cabin"--the many dormers on multiple levels is a very nice design choice. It feels a bit Old World-y, fairy tale-ish, and lodge-like rolled together, so that it is its own thing. You've made me think about what my own dream cabin for the Rockies would be... I'd probably dream of something rather castle-like and Richardsonian Romanesque in rough stone with some chalet/lodge influence. I'd get on that if I had some good free time to dedicate to the Sims. :P

The upper porches on the Nordic villa are my favorite bits, especially the L-shaped one on the right.

hi. here's summat I created, earlier.

Hi, I just joined the group. I'm building a Second Empire type house - my idea was to make it look rundown, but I haven't succeeded yet as I see it in my mind.

Rundown is surprisingly hard to do, especially if you're like me and don't use CC! It's obviously not anything like a Second Empire style, but if you wanted to get at least a little bit of an idea of some of the things that can work to make a lot look a little more rundown without having to download a bunch of different stuff, take a look at my Armscor Warehouses lot... it's industrial, not residential, but you can see a few different techniques at play there!

Also, if you put up screenshots, people in this group are usually happy to give you feedback- a sort of architecture-specific creator feedback forum, if you will!

Thanks, Zarathustra, your warehouses have some great ideas I can use - I do use CC so I should be able to figure something out. The problem is that rundown has a random element that I find hard to achieve in the sims.
I wanted the house for a game where the sims are living in a house that hasn't changed in 100 years. It might also be fun to try it with a chateau/castle. One of the inspirations was an estate sale I went to in a nearby town. The house wasn't Second Empire - just a plain little house. But everything in there was unchanged from maybe the late 19th/early 20th century. The wallpaper in the parlor had faded to a dark yellow but you could still see the faint original print. It was a cool day in April and a woodburning cook stove in the kitchen was heating the house. I was looking at some old quilt squares in the front room and a man asked the guy who was in charge of the sale what they were planning to do with the house and he said, 'Live in it." So maybe it was going to continue like that for another 100 years.

I find it's the complete opposite, you have to think carefully about exactly where each little thing is placed. It's not random at all, instead it's highly logical, you've got to think about how people living in the house would use and abuse the space, and what causes decay. Which areas are likely to be neglected first, i.e. which are the rooms that aren't used as much? (dust, dirt and pests will all take to the rooms where they are going to be uninterrupted), Which rooms get the most unobstructed sunlight? (the sunlight will cause fading and uv damage), which floor areas receive the most foot traffic? (every time you walk across a floor you're slowly damaging it with your shoes), where are the most logical places for the usual clutter of trinkets, books and old newspapers to pile up?
Another thing you have to bare in mind is the back story of the house, has the family living in it had the money to maintain the house and hold on to all their possessions, meaning that the house is very cluttered, or have they had financial difficulties forcing them to sell of their possessions leading to a much more sparsely decorated interior? And also, how long has the house been on the downturn? How long has mother nature been slowly infiltrating the house's structure?

Meanwhile, I'm now wondering whether I go the whole hog with my Queen Anne style home and have shutters?
I went the whole hog.




The Georgians were remarkably terrified of nighttime and things that go bump in the dark. Fully functional shutters were that extra protective layer that helped them feel just that little bit safer in a time without a proper police force. But later on, as things got safer at night, there was less need for shutters and so they were seen as rather burdensome and old fashioned and often removed and replaced by blinds that could serve to block out the light instead. I can't think of a single house in our village that still has them, but I think that's rather sad and wonder whether this house suits them or not?

Also, stitch_too, I never mentioned how interesting your design was. Pyramid style homes are very unusual and rarely made in real life. Is there a particular example that has inspired your design?

I've been enjoying going through this thread and also What Are You Working On in Lot Creators. So many great pixel buildings!
This what I came up with for the Second Empire house - I didn't finish the upstairs rooms, bathrooms or kitchen yet.

RoseCity, that looks gorgeous! Will we get to see the interior at all? Given all the fine details you've captured in that creation, I'm guessing you're also very keen on historic architecture?

Guys I haven't visited the thread for a while and reading the last pages I was wondering: nobody is using TS4 to build houses?

i do. the house i put up is from TS4. also looks like Darth Vader. lol

Thank you, Fergus - I guess I should give a lot of the credit to all the custom content creators who made the details possible!
Yes, I'm very interested in architecture - especially residential.
Here are some of the rooms I more or less finished -
Front Parlor -



Front Hallway looking down from upper floor -


Dining room -

@Paola2

I don't build with Sims 4, because I don't play Sims 4.

1. EA mandates that I allow their spyware, Origin, loose on my computer in order to play Sims 4.

Unacceptable.

2. I have no idea if anything's changed, but when it first came out, they couldn't be bothered to allow CFE for builders.

@RoseCity

I love those distressed walls and rugs! Victorian is my favorite to build and to decorate for. Your house and its interiors are beautiful.

RoseCity... I think I'm in love with your building style :lovestruc I just love how you've done the interior. It's so vivid and realistic. When can I move in? This house might be of interest to you.
P.S. How long have you been playing to get that good at building?

I have to agree with tsyokawe, I don't build with TS4 because I don't have TS4. I don't intend on getting for the reasons she stated and also because of the even stricter limit on levels. The restrictions in TS3 are as much as I'm willing to compromise.

Hey sorry guys I haven't been on for awhile the wireless card on my laptop has gone haywire! Not sure qhars going on there but as soon as I get it all fized I'll have pics of my mini courtyard palace! And a couple others!

@Fergus - I realized I should add more fireplaces or radiators - wasn't thinking too much about how this house was heated. I agree that the level limitation is frustrating. It took me a while to figure out how to get the height of the tower proportional to the house.
Thank you for the link to the dilapidated house slideshow. That was amazing. I wish they'd shown the kitchen, but maybe it was too horrifying.

@tsyokawe - Thank you - Victorian is my favorite as well. I actually wanted to build that house just so I'd have somewhere to use that wallpaper.

Yeah, I'd certainly have a lot more fireplaces. While I'd try to have one in pretty much every room, I realise that isn't always practical, so maybe just one on the other side of the house to even out the façade and make it more symmetrical. I'd then put one in the rear wing in the kitchen if it's located there? Then the house would be perfection in my eyes. :lovestruc
Other than fireplaces, furnaces with heating vents throughout the house is another popular heating method in Victorian homes. I've never seen it used before here in the UK, but from what I gather it was quite popular in the US.

Woodstoves are smaller than fireplaces, so they're a touch more practical for widespread use without messing up the facade and rooflines...

(and for what it's worth, furnaces and heating vents as a heating method isn't just for Victorian homes- my second place is absolutely a mid-century modern building, and it uses the same approach!)

I tried to replicate the ornamentation seen on the verandahs of a lot of Australian homes. A lot of random stabs in the dark with CFE proved to be reasonably successful, however this attempt fell victim to poor planning. But now that I know it can work I will certainly try it again.

I love lots with multiple functions- apartments, community lots with more than one business, and home businesses, and I love finding ways to hide things behind the facades of otherwise normal-looking buildings. I really liked the movie Kingsman: The Secret Service, and I decided that the streets of Jambalaya Quarter needed a row of tailors and fashion boutiques that would hide the headquarters of a super-secret espionage and counterintelligence service.
With this lot, I'm taking a lot of cues from myself, and copying things from my Nosferatu Court lot- i.e., all these "separate" buildings actually share walls and foundations, so I'll be able to go in and design secret passages and rooms between them. I'm designing this lot to function as a home business as well, so that the tailor shops can actually sell beautiful hand-crafted English style suits to my Sims (sidebar: if you sell a Sim clothing or give them a makeover on a home business lot, it'll carry over into their normal appearance outside the home business lot, right?). At the moment, I'm still working on the facade, but I have to say I'm quite happy with how it's coming along! I'm taking inspiration from London, New York, New Orleans, and all sorts of other places, and I think it's coming together quite nicely!

That's a really cool idea Zarathustra! What you've done so far reminds me of some old money neighbourhood in a city somewhere in the south. :lovestruc