Go ahead and admit it - we’ve all done it. That’s right, the curse of the BORING rectangular house. The house is one shape, all the rooms are square and the roof is so tall it could knock down a low flying plane. Do some of you get into ruts when building houses? Are some of you not very good at making anything other than a square house? Well, this is the tutorial for you! I have compiled this short instructional post for all Sims 2 builders alike. For those of you who are in a rut, this may act as a list of tips & tricks. For those of you who aren’t in a rut but rather have difficulty building homes based off a square, this may act as a tutorial. Whatever the case may be, let’s get started!

Building a place for you Simmies can be very time-consuming, but hopefully this tutorial will help everyone spice up their houses just enough without having to spend a week building. After all, our Simmies shouldn’t have to live in a boring house, now should they? What is a boring house, you ask? A house that has no original shape, square rooms and no details to make it stand out.



In the picture above, you can see that the entire house is a giant rectangle and all the rooms have a boring square shape. Here is a better look at the inside of the “boring house”:



The first thing to change is very simple... Add one, small extra shape onto the original rectangle shape of the house. Like this:




Next, why don’t we add a small area in the back of the home as a place for a small sitting room or sun room. The diagonal walls and small addition onto the original shape of the home can be plastered with big windows in order to let a lot of sunlight in for your Simmies.



Next, try adding a small room to one side of your house. This can be for anything - a bedroom, an office, the kitchen, etc. You have plenty of time to decide that later.



To balance out the room added to the one side of your home, why not add another room to the other side? Make sure not to make it the same size, as most homes are not symmetrical. Im placing a small room on the left side of my home to act as the downstairs bathroom.



When you are happy with the layout of the lower level of your house, its time to add the stairs (if you want a two story home). When I added the small bathroom, I noticed that it would be a great place to build my stairs up to, since you don’t want to place stairs in the middle of any room.



The next step - if you are including a second level - would be to decide the layout of the upper level. This can take some time because you want to keep in mind how you would like the roof to look in the front of the home especially. I like to have a little bit of variation with my rooflines because it helps give the home a unique look. This is how I decided to create my second floor:



Now the next step is to separate the rooms in your floor plan and add some flooring. Flooring can be changed whenever and however many times you want, so deciding on the final color/type is not important. I decided on a nice, white tile floor for my kitchen and bathrooms, a little bit of wood flooring upstairs and some fluffy carpet for the main room and bedrooms.





Continued...

Now comes time for one of the hardest parts in building a house - THE ROOF! I know many of your instincts tell you to hit the “auto roofs” button (I did that for SO long), but lets try and make something a little more interesting and unique.

Instead of navigating into the auto-roofs menu...



Navigate instead to roof types menu to create a custom roof...



For the three roof sections covering the lower level/front of the home, I used the roof tool highlighted below:





For the two left-most roof sections covering the upper level of the home, I used the roof tool highlighted below:





And for the right roof section covering the upper level of the home, I used the roof tool highlighted below:





Now its time to add those windows As seen in the pictures above, the door I chose was white with glass slats. You really want to pick windows which match your front door to give some kind of flow to the house. For example, the window highlighted below is long and red and has a modern look to it. This would be a bad choice:



I decided to use two windows which best matched the front door that I selected. Try and use just the right amount of windows when building a home - too many or too little could make the house look funny. Also, remember how you divided up your rooms when placing windows. DON’T place large windows in a bathroom, use high privacy windows instead. Place large windows in the main room areas or stairwells or sitting/sun rooms to give a lot of light.





Taking a little more time on painting the exterior of a home can make a LOT of difference versus slapping on the same color paint on all the exterior walls - this goes the same for inside. I decided to work on some corner-blocked stucco walls for the outside of my home as I thought it would match the look of the doors and windows nicely.



Now the last steps are strictly for vanity - add a small walkway from the front door to the mailbox, a little fencing by the front door, a couple of bushes and trees and you’re done! Now doesn’t this look a little more interesting than what we started with?

Before:


After:


Notes:
There are many easy and safe cheats you can use to spruce up the look of your home.

- I used boolProp snapObjectsToGrid false in order to be able to place my flowers close together.
- I used moveobjects on to combine two trees into one, making it look much fuller and bigger.
- Try using the terrain tool to add a little coloration under your trees or shrubs. This adds a lot, trust me.
- Also, try using roofslopeangle # (default #=45, enter anything less) to get the slope of your roof less intense. Youll have to play around with this one.

Try visiting http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?...ame_Help:Cheats for an extensive list of cheats.

Wow, this is just a -GREAT- tutorial!!! My houses always used to be boring, but not any more! By the way that after house is gorgeous! The transformation is just unbelievable! And I'm the first post yay!

Nice tutorial, I try to build more interesting houses, but sometimes I just get bored with building, wanting it over and done with and Bam! my sims live in box...
Thanks for the inspiration

Normally, I just download premade houses for my simmies from here. Now I think I'll try my hand at building. Thanks!

That is such an awesome house! My sims houses either took me ages to complete, or were tiny and booring. I'll never make those mistakes again!

Thanks sooo much!

Hey guys, thanks so much for posting your feedback. I was really hoping this would help a lot of people, so Im happy to see it has helped some so far

Hey!!!!
thanks soooooooo much!!! I use the door you used in allmost all my houses, and always the 'no no' window. Now I see what goes, I can change it!

:D

Just a question! When building houses i always have to lay foundations and then have the wooden foundations and steps up so that my sims can get into the house? For some reason i cant build a house staright onto the floor any reason for this do you know?
By the way that after house is beautiful! xxx

cazsamps... I dont know what the problem would be in that case. Just make sure your ground is flat by using the flatten elevation tool under the shovel icon in build mode - that way your ground is completely flat BEFORE you place walls. The only other thing I can think of would be that you have some sort of building cheat activated which is causing problems with placing walls on your ground. Have you ever played around with...

boolProp constrainFloorElevation true/false

If you have, make SURE you turn it off by using that cheat plus true. Having this building cheat activated can really screw with normal building functions. Let me know if those work, otherwise, explain a little more and maybe I can help you.

Thanks for reading the tutorial, and Im really happy its working out!

Sorry! I was meant to come back and tell you its all sorted now lol
I have used your tut and its fab!!!
I dont know what went wrong with the house thing but its ok now which is a bonus!!
xxxxxd

Good to hear, cazsamps

very nice, But hey there nothing wrong living in a box.
But to be serious i think its a really nice tut you made, and i must admit used to always press the auto roof button,

But thanks

This is probably a stupid question, but I'm hoping that the answer is "you missed something", rather than "Photoshop".

How did you get the roofs in your screenshots to have a different color from the rest? And is there a way in game to make a roof with more than one color of tile pattern? I had a house which would have looked really cool with a checkerboarded roof, but there was no good way to put it on.

Hi i was wondering how you have all those roof shape options. Like the dome ones and the cones? does it comes with one of the games or is it a download?

thank you

sidneydoj... The red you see for some of the roofs was done by Photoshop. As far as I know, there is not a way to get different color roofs (ie two or more patterns) on one lot. Sorry!

bronson6666... The roof shapes youre asking about were included in Open For Business. I HIGHLY recommend that Expansion Pack

Very well done boolPropped! great, easy to follow, and very well detailed too!

Thanks so much for reading waggles... I hope it helps you out

well presented, pictures always help me understand better, this has given me the push i need to make better houses!

Wow it was a great tutorial!

Great tutorial! I enjoyed reading it and found it very helpful for a beginner builder! One quick question though. How (or where) did you get the corner stucco bricks? I would love to have those for my homes.

Thanks!

They come with the game; OFB I think.

I always hated the houses I made, they were always very simple, thanks to you I can make more realistic better looking homes on the sims!

Yep, they came with the game and Im pretty sure they came with OFB. I love the wall myself and use it on 90% of my houses!

BeeFree200... Im so happy to hear you enjoyed the tutorial and that it helped you out Thanks for giving feedback!

A very nice tutorial... now I wanna go build some houses. Thankfully, I have a new neighborhood that's mostly empty. :P

Any tips with roofs? I've played with them a little, but they never seem to go the way I want them to. :S