Two bedroom one bath, $19,996

This is the sort of house that's described as has potential. It's on a 3x2 lot. I think it would require a no watering/weeding mod or a tend inaccessible plants mod.

Your thoughts?

Your pics are to small, you should get Fraps http://www.fraps.com/download.php it makes better and bigger pics.

The images are too small, but I can see that your lounge is far too big. The other rooms seem to be about the right size though. Here are some helpful instructions for image taking

If by "lounge" you mean "bathroom" i disagree - that's a three-by-three and there's plenty of reasons to have one that size, like making sure there's room for potty chairs, litter boxes, dogwashing, or even just clutter. It depends on what you do with it. Positioned where it is, it will even be easy for a player who finds it to big to remodel it into a bathroom plus an entryway closet. I think the design is practical and flexible; and good job getting a usable house under $20K with a garage.

I'm a little concerned about the narrowness of the eating end of the kitchen. I'm always afraid someone's going to get trapped in a corner - An old fear left over from Sims1, where it was much easier to do. I like to scale dining areas around a single-tile table with four chairs around it, ensuring that there's a free ring of squares around that, and I'm not sure the width is good for that here. But I'm arguably over-cautious on that point.

Lounge is another word for front/living room

Ah, in that case, I still disagree. Sims don't need a bunch of separate rooms - they just create routing problems. That big general-purpose room will hold plenty of skilling, social, and comfort objects, good for parties and family time. I sometimes have bigger ones than that, throwing the food prep area in with them. It should be several promotions before the family has to expand, with a living room that size.

Yes, but at the moment it doesn't and the one sofa and bookcase on the far wall make it look really empty.

The downloader could add a pool table, as well as a desk with a computer or other big objects and it will fill the space and it won't look too big, so I agree with Peni.

Big career reward objects could be placed there without any problems.

A pool table is not a normal item for a starter hosue which needs to be 20,000 or under.

Peni, while sims might not need a bunch of rooms, houses for upload need to be pleasing to the eye.

OP, I can barely see your pictures. If you want to take quick C pictures you will need to put all your settings on high and large. For the actual upload you will need screenshots.

It's a starter house. It's for sims to move in and make their own with whatever is suitable for that house. If she furnishes it, or even adds more walls, it'll be too expensive to buy with the $20K handout. If I'm sick of building and want to download a house, this is what I want to see!

There's even a sensible solution in it to a problem I'm always running up against on my own - I like to have a wet wall with all the plumbing on it, but I also don't want sims to be constantly taking their dishes to the bathroom sink to wash them because it's closer. Having the eating area and the bathroom at opposite ends of the kitchen like that is simple and brilliant.

For the upload it might be a good idea to show just the floorplan and then provide a couple of example shots showing the furnishing possibilities for different types of households. A swinging bachelor setup, a young married setup, a retired couple setup, that kind of thing.

But as a starter house, all it needs is a kitchen, a bathroom, a bed, a chair, a place to sit. and room to put stuff as you can afford to buy it. That is literally all a sim needs to start a life.

Big living rooms like that one are common where I live - I have one myself - it holds my TV, my sofa and chairs, my dining table (with 6 chairs); my dog's (own) sofa, a huge chest that doubles as the telephone/coffee table and a display cabinet, a round coffee table, two wicker chairs (and there is still plenty of space to move around) - and I live in a two bedroom flat. What is realistic to one person is not necessarily realistic to another one living in another country. At least Sims will not bump into each other all the time. This looks more like the kind of house I might use in my game (I'd demolish the garage, though) - I can add a wall myself if I feel like it, or not.

The OP can save money by making the house smaller or by exchanging the trees for cheaper plants. I think it has potential but needs a little tweaking.

I agree to the plants, those are expensive trees and not really necessary. What about not making the house smaller, but just make the rooms less square - bedroom doors a tile in or out (As an amateur myself, I learn a lot from the feedback here). I do like

I'm very much against making the house smaller, which would make it less useful to me personally (seriously; those of you who like the fancy decorated clever houses have no idea how underserved those of us who just want something to plop down are), but you could shift the bedrooms a square or two to the rear or front of the lot to make the whole house less boxy in front view, at the cost of a wall or two, which could easily be covered by substituting cheaper trees.

Presumably Sunbee is busy trying to get her screenshot program to behave itself and will be along to respond in due course when she has her pictures in good shape. As is I can't tell for sure which windows those are along the front. or what the wall treatments are like. It's obviously an M&G house, so I'm curious whether it's got a ceiling or not.

And before my internet connection was rudely interrupted, I was going to say : I do like the bigger bathroom as well.

*Note: find and make behave a screenshot program* What's free and plays well with Win 7? The pictures don't look that bad before upload, but yes, those are quite horrible. Does Fraps play well with Win 7? I thought I had it set on extra large pics, but I will double check and see if I can get some better.

This is loosely based off about a thousand houses in my area--the rectangular ranch style house. Would a fully restored/furnished version be of interest as well? Because I can do that.

Outside walls: rock foundation, cedar shake siding (again, really common around here). Inside: the dinged up beachy whatever-the-heck paint from Uni in the great room. The dinged up classy wallpaper in the bathroom. Awful orange and green shag carpet, except for linoleum in the kitchen area and where the previous homeowner ripped it down to subfloor in the bathroom. The smaller bedroom has had the walls stripped and partially re-sheetrocked--those bare wood, wood and sheetrock, and just sheetrock walls from M&G--I think M&G. The bigger bedroom still has the wood paneling (70's dark wood? Something like that). The windows are the cheap base game windows that look like the sort on any house older than 1950 or so--double hung, I think they're called, usually with a little pulley system and a rope (but that's often broken), and the bottom goes up and down--or did, once upon a time before it was painted shut decades ago.

It's not actually a garage, it's a carport.

Yes, Peni, there's a ceiling--ceilings are free, after all!

Double-posting to try adding another picture because editing didn't work.

Fraps works on Windows 7 (although mine has stopped working, suddenly and completely, for no reason I can detect; I presume this is a problem with my machine, not with Fraps or Windows 7 in particular, though). You'll want some basic photo editor, too.

Carport, yes, I knew that - much better than an attached garage on a house with a foundation; but building carports is not something I've mastered, either.

The actual builder's term for those windows is "sash" windows, with "Double-hung" just meaning there's two parts to it, both of them theoretically moveable. But double-hung is what they're called in the catalog.

The picture is a lot better. I am on Win 7 and use FRAPS free version, a red pause line mod remover and GIMP also free to change my BMP screenshots into jpgs.

I can only speak for how I build myself, but if I was building that lot I would not be happy with the size of the living room and the dinning end of the kitchen feels cramped. The large size of the living room makes it feel even more cramped because of the disproportion between them. It isn't that you can't have a large lounge room, but to me it belongs to a house which would also have a larger kitchen and dining area-does that make sense? I would extend that dinning end wall a couple of squares to the right-where the patio is and then extend the patio likewise another 2 tiles to the right. Then the bedrooms one tile larger to the left making the lounge room smaller. I would also change around some plants.

Yeah, now that I can see to count tiles the eating area seems to be only three tiles wide, which would bug me and would also cause routing problems with the back door. You could steal a tile or two from the back porch, or shift the porch over that distance keeping it the same size.

And although this is easily done by the player, for sims the logical and efficient arrangement of that in-line kitchen would be fridge, counter, stove, sink, with the sink closest to the eating end. So they'd enter the kitchen, get out the food, take one step to the counter to prep it, take one step to cook it, serve it up, and when finished everyone would take it to the sink right next to the table.

I love the worn, pre-owned tacky details. I personally find the bathroom with the subfloor showing hilarious; but you might find it confuses people who've never lived in a neighborhood like this, who would be constantly pointing out to you that you "forgot" to put flooring in the bathroom.

How about moving the stove, fridge, counters to the other corner of the kitchen? Dining table can go in the big room, a bar chair or two (and later high toddler chair) in the kitchen?

Well, but that spoils the advantage of having the eating place as far from the bathroom as possible for sims don't do their dishes in the bathroom.

To save some money you can delete the foundation within the walls and just put flooring down - it saves quite a lot.

Sims doing dishes in the bathroom don't bother me - larger families, some members will take off to the bathroom to do their dishes anyway (or the dustbin outside ). I will put the dining area where the sofa is, more or less, then, and stick a cheap bar and bar stools in the space where the stove and counters are now. (With the money saved from taking the foundation away )

I like this one on the foundation, with the little porches. Foundations don't add much money if you only outline the footprint instead of laying it in solidly.