I was dog-sitting for my brother all weekend and had major Sims 2 withdrawal, so I installed the base game on his computer and built a couple of houses. This first one is your basic starter with one bedroom, 1 bathroom, and the essentials such as telephone, fire alarm, and bookcase. It costs §19,963 (I don’t know why the Exchange says it has zero value). This house is base-game only with no custom content. It is completely clean and hack-free.

Porch View

Download Porch View from The Sims 2 Exchange

A few more pics…

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I have three more houses available at Parsimonious (where my name is “Maude”):

Cooper – “For the small family that likes to live large”
Found in the “Medium” lot section of residential

Carraway – “A luxury cottage”
Found in the “Medium” lot section of residential

Baird Cottage – “A starter home with room to grow”
Found in the “Small” lot section of residential

Look for more houses based on your suggestions in the coming weeks! And I’ll continue to take your requests, so keep ’em comin’. :-)

I hope you all had a fantastic New Year’s Eve! As for me, I ate too much chocolate, drank too much pop, and laughed my head off. If there’s any truth to the theory that the way you ring in the New Year is the way you’ll spend the rest of the year, then I have 12 months of hilarity and stomachaches to look forward to. :-D

My brain was yowling today after working on the Brayton update, so I took a break and did something a little more relaxing: I built a house. On Friday I got a new book called American Country Building Design, which is full of real floor plans from farm and country houses of the 19th century (and just as much fun to read as it is to look at). The house I decided to build was originally published in a book called “The Country Gentleman” in 1856 and is basically a farmhouse in a gothic style, hence the name “Country Gothic”.

I built it on my “clean” Windows account using all Maxis items except for some walls, floors, and fencing by Marina (who kindly gave me permission to redistribute her items). The house costs around §163,000 and is fully furnished in the Victorian style (except where I had to use modern items like the telephone, smoke detector, and refrigerator). Instead of uploading it to the Exchange, I put it on my own webspace this time — let me know if you have any problems.

Download “Country Gothic” (just unzip and double-click to install)

(UPDATE: I forgot to mention that you will need the University and Nightlife expansions for this house.)

If you’d like to see some more pictures, click on the link below. Enjoy!

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Over on SimScribes, Yicke asked if anyone would like to make her some Victorian houses, and Bitsy seconded the request, so I thought I’d create one and make it available for upload. I didn’t want to redistribute any custom content, so I used Maxis-only items. I’ve checked the lot with the Sims 2 Clean Installer, so it should be completely clean, containing no hacks or custom objects. It is fully furnished, and though you may see a Victorian lady in the pictures, she does not come with the house. :-)

Belldon

The lot is available for download from the Sims 2 Exchange:

Download Belldon

Bedrooms: 4 (two with double beds, one with two singles, and one with one single)
Bathrooms: 4
Cost: §158,272.

NOTE: Even though it says it requires Nightlife, I tried to keep any Nightlife objects/wallpapers/floors out of the house, so that those without Nightlife could use it. It does require University, however. Hopefully you won’t have any trouble with it!

Here are some more preview pics of the house:

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I finally finished furnishing and decorating Blackberry Place, so it is now available on the Sims 2 Exchange. Thanks to Dustyn for requesting that I make it available — I had forgotten that it was unfinished.

Visit Blackberry Place on the Sims 2 Exchange

I haven’t built anything in forever (aside from my Legacy House), but Heidi has made some lovely homes that I have placed in my neighborhood, and I downloaded some really nice ones from The Sims Resource. Mt. Geneva is starting to look like a real town!

Just for kicks the other night I played the Goths in Pleasantview. I had Cassandra marry Darren Dreamer and decided to build a house for them. So I picked out another house I liked from Sarah Susanka’s book Creating the Not-So-Big House, a simple suburban-style house with a lot interior character, and attempted a loose re-creation. Very loose, actually, since there are just so many things we can’t replicate due to the limitations of the objects and building tools.

Here are some examples of things I couldn’t manage:

– A winding stairway with a window seat on the landing
– A garage (I could probably fake one, but it’s just wasted space, so I ended up turning it into a master bedroom suite)
– A true island in the kitchen (not a breakfast bar)
– Built-in cabinets or benches of any kind
– Siding with trim to make the exterior more interesting

OK, enough whining. ;-) As I was saying before, I started out building this house for Darren, Cassandra, and the two boys, but I think I’ll end up moving it to Mt. Geneva and using it for a new family I created the other night. The master bedroom suite would be great for the grandparents, and the treehouse would be better suited to that family’s kids than to the Goth/Dreamer teens. Anyway, decided to share it with you guys just for fun.

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