As I mentioned in my last post, I’m having a love affair with houses from the 1920s, particularly the Sears pre-fab homes that were popular back then. Since I have to fill up Shady Bluff with houses anyway, I figured I might as well have fun and attempt to build some of these old-fashioned beauties. For my first go, I bring you The Vallonia, inspired by the house of the same name in the Sears, Roebuck Catalog of Houses, 1926.
The Vallonia is an updated craftsman-style bungalow with a living room, dining room, kitchen, four bedrooms, and two and a half baths. The lot is small — 2 x 3 — but the house takes up most of the space, so it’s quite roomy. There wasn’t any room for a garage, but hey, that’s what taxicabs are for, right?
The house is fully furnished using only Maxis items. I have all of the expansions and stuff packs installed, but you shouldn’t need all of them in order to play this house — at least, I hope not. If you have trouble installing it, try using the Sims 2 Pack Clean Installer.
I haven’t playtested it much yet as I’m on a building rampage at the moment, so if you happen to play it and run into any issues, do let me know!
Download The Vallonia (ZIP file)
To see more views of The Vallonia as well as some examples of alternative exteriors (using awesome and completely free custom content!), read on!
The back of the house
The living room
The dining room
The kitchen
One of the bathrooms
One of the first floor bedrooms
Aaaaand…I forgot to take snapshots of the floorplan, so I apologize. It looks pretty much like the original, except the stairs are arranged differently, and there’s a little reading nook on the second floor landing. Also, one of the upstairs bedrooms was converted to a bathroom.
Now for a little diversion…since I’m going to be recycling this home myself, I thought I’d display some examples of how it could be altered, using free custom content to do so. These are just suggestions and are not available for download. However, I have listed credits below each picture if you want to go and snag some of the great stuff on display.
The first one is sort of beachhouse-style:
Beachy Vallonia
Credits:
Palm trees by alex_stanton1983
Yard plants by SimplyStyling (Objects –> Outdoor/Garten –> page 4)
Shorter Independent Expressions windows by Sunni Sims
Planters by Marina
Exterior light by AvenidaSims
Exterior and foundation walls by AvenidaSims
Backless bench by Jendea @ The Sims Zone
The second one is a variation in brick:
Brick Vallonia
Outdoor lantern by Numenor
Magnolia tree by Maxis/Numenor
3-tile Lattice Window by zookini
Triple Wide Double Hung window by tigmomx4
Brick fence with supports by yedda_2000
Tall tree by someone at MTS2 — I can’t find it! Phooey. I’ll update this link if I can figure it out…
Foundation wallpaper by margierytka
Medieval Stone Tiles by CokeBuilder
Ginseng, Lily, & Mandrake plants by Kate @ Parsimonious
Primroses by macarossi
Potted plant by Nengi @ Nengi’s Builds and Things
Front door recolor by nazariopilar
Happy Simming!
Love the house, Jen! I really like that style and I cannot wait to see more. This will definitely be popping up in my hood. I wish I could build like that. It’s so cool to see how you folks can take a floorplan and make it look so awesome in the sims 2, yet retain functionality. Great job!
This one is going straight into the new neighbourhood I’m setting up. :D Thank you so much, Jen! I do so love old fashioned houses.
By the way, I found another nice site with free houseplans today: http://www.ultimateplans.com — it doesn’t have very many search options (square footage, # of floors, bedrooms, bathrooms or style) but it’s easy to navigate through and the pictures are of good quality. I’m especially liking their cottages. :D
Hi!. I love the way the house looks.It makes me want to build a house but I can’t decorate it the same coz of the flashing red wall bug on the game but I can still dream.
Good luck on building the rest of the neighbourhood.
Keep Simming!
See ya later
Great versatile house! Thank you!
Looks great, Jen! :D I downloaded it too (since I’m doing the Have 10 Kids thing again with the Legacy’s and Kaili’s LTW is to see six of them married off.. I’m going to need houses. And this saves me from having to build one myself. Ha). The house looks really nice done in the brick, too. Hooray for free CC! :D
Awesome House Jen! I definitely will download it. It looks really great, but I think I loike your version the best. :)
I updated again, come see? :D I posted a pic of the layout for my new town to be. I got a bit fancy with it in Photoshop, but I think it does make it easier to see which street is which.
Beautiful houses! I could never build anything like that I’m kind of hopeless when it comes to architecture but when I do try to build my houses tend to look kind of deformed.(don’t ask) the houses are one thing that I really love about your site.
Nice! I love the houses and they look really nice. I SUCK at making houses, probably because I dont have the paitence, so when I start a house I save it and then forget what I was doing last time and start again. I like your houses. I cant wait for a story soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Beautiful, and you really stayed true to the original design. Very nice. I like the interior,too, not what one would expect. And all with Maxis content! Now THAT’S an accomplishment. Bravo! BTW, Westfield Park is up on my site, has been for a while now, but I haven’t made my usual update comments on everyone’s sites. I’m working on the church now! Starting with Jade and spurred on by you, I think a custom ‘hood building trend has started, almost everyone is doing it now! It’s the next legacy challenge! Anyway, I’ll be waiting to see what else you come up with!
Everytime I try to load the Vallonia, it crashes the game. Probably because I don’t have nightlife or pets… but it’s sad, I wanted to see it ;-;
It’s a gorgeous-looking house! Man. I always love your houses. I still have a Sim of mine from a contest living in an older one of yours– Cooper, I think. It was pretty modern. (It’s pictured here… maybe you’ll remember it a bit better? And if you’re interested, it’s a shot from my most recent full-fledged Sims story, back in October. Oh, Erie! *heart* She even won the contest I wrote that story for. Maybe she could do some commerical– “Contest winners PREFER Jen’s homes, ten to one! Erie counts as ten!“)
I think the “Beachy” exterior looks the nicest on this one.
I wish there were more pictures of the interior, though– not that I’m commanding (or bugging or asking) you to do that. I mean, do you see me as a commanding person? I’ve no crown, no scepter, no throne… no! No commands, here!
Hey, what EPs does this require, anyway? All of them, so far? I only have Pets and Nightlife, so I’m not so sure it would work for me. Then again, since Pets is most recent, it might be able to get something out of it. Be all like “hrmm… missing University furniture… I’ll just replace it! With lamps! Yeah!”
“Where’s the toilet?”
“…Lamps! Yeah!”
Oh, The Sims 2. Tee hee.
You did a great job! I have a ton of pictures of my Dad’s hometown from that era and this house looks just like my Great-Grandparents house! They actually got married in 1926 too.
hi everyone (cool house!!} could somebody help me i recently installed university and pet so i tink it the graphic card cause my pc iz around 8 yrs old and all da pools and walls are flashing dark and bright red any suggestions? please help if u can thanks. xxx
i downloaded bluffy bluff and made a hood called beachwood Valley i have an account on photobucket so i’ll send pics asap i’m so gonna download your house 2 ! :)
p.s. this is Kairi
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p66/kitty07734/bscap00195uz.jpg
and this is sora
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p66/kitty07734/aa.jpg
That’s a really nice looking house Jen! I love how quaint it looks. I must have it!
Great looking house! And all those Sears homes are cool. It still amazes me to think they actually sold house kits and the cost! Imagine paying only $2,000 for an entire house.
I went to Parsimonious to try to download your houses there but I couldn’t find them. :(
Do you have another way we can download the Cooper, Carraway and Baird Cottage?
Keep up the awesome work!
when uv downloaded the house where do u unzip it 2? i have neva downloaded a house b4
Kitty: When you download a house, you unzip it to… well, it doesn’t matter where you unzip it to, as long as you can find the file with a “.sims2package” extension after you install it.
Mod The Sims 2 has a couple of nice guides on installing custom content. This one is for if you know less about computers, and this one is for if you know more about computers.
Good luck, Kitty! :D
The tour of the church is up and soon I’ll have a tour of the cemetery up. Probably tomorrow. It’s definately coming along!
Pandora Moon and alison – Regarding the flashing red walls, have you seen this thread over at MTS2? It might be helpful to you guys…let me know how it goes!
mieko – Bummer, I’m sorry the house is crashing your game. Have you tried installing it with the Sims 2 Pack Clean Installer? What expansion packs do you have?
Blu – What a cool picture of Cooper! And what contest did you win with Erie? Congrats on that! I would be happy to most more interior pics of my houses in the future. I meant to do floorplan pics with this one and just plain forgot. I’m old, you know. As far as which EPs this house requires, I know I used Nightlife (rugs) and OFB (pans hanging above stove…that was OFB, right? D’oh). I tried to use base game only stuff for the rest, but sometimes I forget what’s what. I’m very sorry if you aren’t able to load the house. :-(
Dee – I’ll see if I can put Cooper, Carraway, and Baird Cottage up for download — just gotta check with the folks at Parsimonious!
thanx a million blu! i ow u my life! well… not quite but close!