Where does your sim live?

My last few homes have been downloaded houses that came beautifully furnished BUT I tend to remove all furniture and then redecorated to the needs of my specific target household and my personal tastes. (eg they come with lovely children’s rooms but the family moving in have no little ones).

I am not a good builder, so I go to the gallery and look for the type of house I want my sim to have. I’ll try out a few until I find the one that fits, then I personalize it with some editing and redecorating. If I don’t find what I need, I’ll look for a shell that I can complete.

It really depends on the sims I am playing.
- When I do a rags to riches, my sims start with an empty lot and slowly build their house bit by bit.
- Sometimes I feel like building a complete house, fully furnished.
- sometimes I want a basic house to start. I prefer houses without furniture or just some basics. The base game houses of foundry cove (willow creek) or parched prospect (oasis springs) come close to what I mean. Some basic starter furniture but free tiles to add additional furniture. And few decorations to easily add own accents. Lately a lot of talented simmers make houses for new packs. They all look good but are a bit too finished and are more difficult to give my own touch. Same for a lot of houses from the gallery. I often look for nice furnitured houses, roughly remember the interior but then place them without furniture to add my own.

I tend to use the houses already in the game as I mostly play premade families and keep them in their original houses. But if I want a house that isn’t in the game I choose one from the gallery and tweak it as necessary. I’m not a builder (I haven’t improved since my first attempts in TS2) and I prefer to just get on playing my game, rather than try to do something that others can do so much better than me.

I don't reference a floor plan but I do google what kind of exterior I'm going for (modern, country etc) and just use that as a reference when building. My houses aren't like the works of art on the gallery but they are mine and most of the time, I create something satisfying for me and my sims.

If I'm not renovating EA premade builds, I'm struggling to build my own. I get a lot of inspiration from others. It's been my goal to become a better builder. I've learned so much from looking at how others build and then try to build something similar from scratch. It's a good way to get more comfortable with building.

I'm such a terrible builder, I have mostly just used the premade houses in the worlds. I've occasionally tinkered with them (usually adding basements and/or sheds), but that's about it. Practice makes perfect, and I'm currently working on making a decent ranch out of the big empty lot in Chestnut Ridge.

For businesses, I have downloaded most of them from the gallery, and I always fill Newcrest up with them as to be a business district for my Sims to shop at. My first designed-by-me business was when I gutted ThrifTea and made it into a hardware/farm and feed for Horse Ranch, as it appears ThrifTea, to begin with, was a repurposed general store.

I can't use gallery homes, community lots yes, but never houses. I play like a doll's house, practically never panning around, camera centered on the lot and everything has to be visible/clickable without me having to constantly adjust the view. This stems from years of having weak computers and playing ts2/ts3 with lag, so moving the camera a lot was always making my fps drop.

Now I don't need to anymore but I kept the habit and I like seeing where all my sims are quickly. Gallery houses are all well designed and cluttered, I just hate having to rotate the view everytime I need to click on the fridge or send my sims to bed (I make exceptions for patio/backyards)! Also it always feels more at home when you design and build yourself, I always start rags to riches style, empty lot no money and go from there. By the time the house is complete it has history and memories, I enjoy my gameplay more that way.

I also use Maxis made premade houses (almost as much as gallery ones) and add what I need in them. I'm not good at decorating and I don't enjoy it at all, so I'm not very picky. As long as my Sims fit in the house properly and they have whatever they need I'm okay.

I prefer to download a shell where the exterior is pretty much complete and then do the interior myself. Creating interesting terrain is not my strong suit; most lots I build myself are flat. And I kind of hate landscaping. But I do like decorating. If I can’t find the right shell, though, I’ll look for a furnished house that I can tweak. Failing that, I’ll build one myself, usually from or inspired by a floor plan. But by the time I finish, I’ve usually decided not to use the house anymore for one reason or another. ? It’s the strangest thing. But I’ll share it to the gallery if it turned out OK.