The Brick Wall House

I’m excited to present a new build for The Sims 4, a modern home inspired by The Brick Wall House, which was created by architectural firm 123DV in the Netherlands.

I’m a big fan of the cube structure and clean lines of this home.

I don’t care for the landscaping as much.  While it certainly lets the home be the star of the show, it is too harsh for me, and I didn’t think that would work well in game.  However, I tried to make sure that any landscaping I did would not detract from the structure itself.

The owner was big on privacy, as you can see from the curtains all around.  I tried to preserve that to an extent while also letting in more light.  Unfortunately, The Sims 4 does not have any functionality to open and close curtains, so it would not have worked to take that part of the design literally.

Here are some exterior shots of the structure I created:

While I did not publish it first, this was the first build I completed in The Sims 4, and I did get a few unpleasant surprises as I worked my way through it.  One of them was that I could not color window frames and door frames black – the darkest color available was a sort of orange/red.  That was quite disappointing as many moderns use a lot of black in their window and door frames.  What I found I could do was use black shelving placed just above and below the windows to at least give the illusion of black framing.

Another challenge I discovered was the roofing – there is no flat roof in The Sims 4.  However, there is one type of roof, the hipped roof, that can be flattened using the new roof tools.  When you recolor it black, it doesn’t look too bad, but with any other color, the roof lines are way too visible.  Fortunately, this house called for a black roof!  I really like the new roof edging – it helped to give a nice, solid eye line.

I also found the fencing choices pretty limited.  There was nothing along the lines of a chain link fence like in the original (not that it was super pretty, but it didn’t interfere with the view of the house), so I opted for using the smallest fence available but only in portions and offset by hedges in order to blend it in to the landscape.

123DV furnished the interior in a modern minimalist style, almost entirely in white.  I tried to stick mostly with that, but with all of the new décor available in TS4, it was a real struggle.  I found myself constantly adding and deleting things!

They did use black accents in some areas, so I used some black and other color accents as well.

There were no house plans available, so I developed my own interior layout.  Here are some shots of the living area, follow by kitchen/dining, which are on the ground floor:

Moving on up to the second floor, we have the landing and an open area that I currently have set up as an office/library, but it could work quite well for any set of sims’ hobbies/activities:

There is a small but open bathroom available to the entire household:

Next, we take a look at the master bedroom and en suite bathroom, which is again small but open.

And the last of the interior, the second bedroom on the third floor, which includes an adjoining balcony.

Here is the home’s floor plan – ground floor, second floor, and third floor:

And I always like to take a few exterior shots in the evening.  I make it a point to pay attention to the lighting at both times of day:

The Brick Wall House is situated on a 30×20 lot and costs $95,294 (sorry, it’s definitely not a starter!).  I think it’s perfectly set up for young adult roommates or siblings, but the second bedroom could also easily be converted to a child’s bedroom.  If you’re interested in seeing more of this home in game, you can download it from the online Gallery here or take a look in game (Just search by name or for my hashtag, #bryscreations).

One word of warning: I used resized objects in this build, and in order to preserve their new size, you should download the home from the gallery onto the lot where you want it; if you download it from Manage Worlds and place it that way, the re-sized objects will return to their original size.  Sorry!  I hope that EA will fix this issue.

Reflections Design Studio for TS4

I’m excited to show off my first published lot for The Sims 4.  To be honest, it was built on a whim.  I noticed the Build ‘n Share challenge thread on the TS4 forums and was intrigued by the first challenge, which is to create a designer sim and his or her office.  I remember Build ‘n Share from TS3; it always looked like fun, but I never participated, so I thought that I’d give it a go this time.

Reflections Design Studio is a commercial property, designated as a museum, set on a 30×20 lot.  It costs $65,531 (which doesn’t matter unless you want to convert it to a residential property, I suppose).  It is a riff on my Reflections Gym & Spa from The Sims 3.  I fell in love with the idea of a mirrored structure when I saw images of this mirror house, and I was re-inspired in TS4 after being amazed by images of the Shard House (possibly my favorite building ever).

For this build, I wanted to go with a modern, edgy design that would also incorporate many windows for natural lighting and an open floor plan.  I wanted to represent my design aesthetic as much as possible.  As with my original gym, this was an interesting challenge in terms of balancing structure, reflectivity, windows/light, and of course, the interior elements.  I also experienced some very strange game quirks as I went along that had me a bit discouraged, given the time crunch (I started just a few days before the challenge was due).  However, I’m happy to report that it’s complete and has well surpassed my original expectations.  I don’t expect it will receive many downloads because it is small, has an odd layout, and is so very specific to the challenge, but I’m still excited to offer up something unique to the community.

Without further ado, here are images of the Studio.  If you would like to check it out in game, you can download it from the online Gallery here or in game, search by its name or by my hashtag, #bryscreations.

Exterior Shots – Afternoon

Interior Shots – Reception Area

Okay, strictly speaking, this last shot was superfluous, and I know you won’t be paying much attention to the interior with such a distraction *ahem*, but I couldn’t resist posting it!

Interior Shots – Waiting Area and Office (I am not going to bother showing you the bathroom – it’s there, and it’s accommodating, but I didn’t wall it with mirrors or anything outrageous, so what’s the point?)

That’s my simself there behind the desk,  I never planned to upload her, but it was required for the challenge.  It feels weird to put ones simself up for grabs!

Here are some overhead shots so that you can get an idea of the floorplan:

And I can’t resist showing more of the exterior at different times of day, first in the evening:

And I just love it at night:

That’s it!  Hope you enjoyed the pictures.  I have a more playable lot (residential) coming soon, and I am toying with remaking the Reflections Gym for TS4.  I also have many attractive sims on the way, as I’ve been having way too much fun experimenting with genetics in CAS.

My First Sims 4 Work in Progress

I was planning to just stick to playing for the first few weeks after getting TS4…but I couldn’t resist wanting to check out the new build mode.  There are definitely a lot of constraints now that I find myself chafing against.  It’s really tough having no cheats whatsoever available, and some of the “smart” tools are quite irksome because you are unable to take manual control when you want/need to.  A prime example of that came when I decided to try my hand at the Volga Patchwork House.

This was a house that I started working on in TS3, and I thought that perhaps with TS4’s shiftable windows, it might be easier.  It’s straightforward in terms of levels; the complexity is in the exterior siding.  I soon discovered that we can no longer choose to use panels with siding in any position we like; they will only go on corners.  And you can’t even do something to trick it, like creating a corner, placing the wall paper, and then deleting one of the walls, because as soon as you delete it, the wall paper reverts to a version with no siding.  Very frustrating not to have manual control over this – we did in TS3!

So for now, I’ve moved on to the Brick Wall House.

I think this house will make for a good starter or next bump up abode, and fortunately, I haven’t encountered anything that makes it impossible to build a decent replica.  The most irritating issues so far have been to do with the color palette (in my opinion, we at least need to have primary colors available for each object), lack of a very low and narrow fence that can be used as edging (the new edging tool is nifty, but again, you have no manual control – it’s all or nothing, and that doesn’t work well with this house, and boy do I miss the Bauhaus windows from TS3 – were always so great to have when creating a modern.  Still, it’s coming along.  Here are some shots:

P.S.  The sims I mentioned in my last post are all now available on the gallery along with a few more from the cast and my attempt at actor Rutger Hauer (unrelated to Veronica Mars).  Simply search for my hashtag, #bryscreations.