Steph's Constructo Challenge TS3 (up'd w/S4)

[andavri]

I know I should be working on everyone's avs, but one of the things that I've found, trying to work on Thea's is I don't really CAST very well for people who have taste. I mean I've gotten kitschy, tacky, loud, and grungy down, but I've got a ways to go before I achieve elegant.

So basically I started this challenge to get some practice which should help me with shooting avs. The sims I chose for this are actually copies of two of my favorite sims from another game who I decided to start over from their CAS copies and give better lives to.


This is Sugar, in my previous game she was the vice president, lived with her brother and sister in law who both had commitment issues. Margarita (her sister-in-law) spent all day shopping, going to the spa, eating out, and flirting with people other than the one she was married to.

Sugar's brother Ronnie was an athlete and liked to go out to the bars and play Foosball after work flirt with people other then one he was married to.

Anyway, Sugar was usually at home, alone, in front of the tv or writing a book. I suppose she got her fill of people at work and with her niece and nephews.


Kienna was a Star News Anchor, just as lonely and miserable as Sugar. She met Marshall, the older of Sugar's two nephews, And they had a fling, but Marshall was involved with someone else and besides having commitment issues of his own, he disliked kids. So when Kienna got pregnant with Sabrina, that kinda fizzled.

So being the kind of chipmunk I am, I took these two lonely souls and gave them a new life together, in a new town, far far far away from Sugar's messed up family. (It does mean no Sabrina, but they can adopt if they want to have kids.)
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Step One: Bathroom

As a first battle in the war against kitsch, this was not a victory. I had to go in three times to tone this room down. Everything was much louder the first time around.


Here are the sinks and a mirror as you walk in the bathroom door. I like the shape of the sink and faucet but really REALLY wish you didn't have to have the stupid fluffing flowers on it.


Shuffle step to the left and you have the necessity and a bath/shower combo.


Seating for two, check, celebrations area (symbolized by openish floor and radio) check.


Baby popping area. (Symbolized by butterflies. Cause that's how babies are born, right? )


And back at the celebration area from the baby-popping station.

Oh, the fact that it turned out kinda SPG colors was actually pretty much by accident. It was originally beige and blue and I kept tweaking it, shifting it. And then when I was resizing them I went, oooh, hey, funny how that worked.
~Steph

[andavri]

Step three: Kitchen
Neither of these ladies have an real opinion of Craftsmen style or of southwestern style, so I decided a hybrid of the two would work just fine. (The lines are more southwest, the colors are craftsmen.)

Oh, I did completely finish the kitchen before I started the entry, but forgot to take pictures and after forty minutes of moving walls and rearranging things, I was not up for rebuilding it. So I just left it and took the pictures.


Overview. I was really trying for homey and lived in, it sorta ended up more "mock up for model house" but I tried!


View through the arch.


Dining table with seating for five, and lemonade, woot. I put in a lot of flowers cause I just see that being Kienna's style just dropping a vase full of something on any and all available surfaces.


Okay, technically it's a bookshelf not a pantry, but you can store stuff in the bottom so I say it counts.


Window, fridge, dishwasher, sink and clutter.


And back toward the arch, it would have looked so much better if the roses were recolorable. Peach or cream roses would have fit the room a lot more.

This room actually didn't come out too kitschy. I was pleasantly surprised about that. And I really like the colors from the walls. (It's an actual historically accurate color palette from the craftsman era.)
~Steph

[andavri]

Step Four: Entry (or proof the kitsch is still alive and well.)
The styles I picked for Sugar and Kienna had quite a bit of overlap, by the colors I saw them favoring, not so much. In fact they both loathe gray, but I see country tone blues, slates, yellows, pinks, soft greens, for Kienna and I see jewel tones, warm Indian (as in India) colors for Sugar.

So finally I decided I'd go with kind of a compromise. More the lines Kienna likes for the furniture, but Sugar's colors. Warning the following post involves PINK bricks.


Overview of the entryway. I had to move them, they were standing where I was trying to put a flower garden. I forgot to get a shot of the chairs they're sitting on from a non overview, but there is seating.


From the kitchen toward the front door. I didn't want to use that door. But the door I wanted to use was a single door on two tiles. It said double doors in the description. And then the two other double doors I liked I couldn't find windows I liked to go with. So this was like my fourth choice. (And if/when I play this house, I'm seriously thinking I may change the doors for the one I wanted. )


You can see the neighbors and the front walk through the front door.


Kienna likes tea and plants (of course), so her knickknacks are the clock, the tea posters and the flowers. There are repeating flower hanger things from the kitchen, plus I used the same arch for the living room and the same door from the bathroom for work room. Also the windows are the same throughout.


Sugar's there in the stack of books and the painting up on the second floor. See Sugar lived with Margarita and Ronnie for a long while and when she left Margarita gave her a gift for her new house... Except even though Sugar lived with them Margarita never paid enough attention to figure out what Sugar actually likes


Upstairs. By the time I was to this point on the room I was out of ideas for how to get all the floortiles so I just did a very minimalistic loft reading nook and hoped you could get to other rooms via it.


I had fun with this sofa. I do not know why, I just did.


And last picture for tonight, the front walk. I am still learning TS3 gardening. Plants are something that have either come with the houses I've downloaded or used or they're something that never gets planted in my other houses. So it's not bad for my second garden ever, right?
~Steph

[Kiri]

It's better than not bad - it's gorgeous!

I love the garden. The rest of the house looks pretty good and not as kitsch as you think they are!

[Theachen7]

I love it! The garden look wonderful
I find I am loving the pink bricks a bit. They remind me of something, I'm just not sure what..

[Whitnerd]

Everything is beautiful! The girls, the rooms, everything! That entrance hall is really neat. I can't get over how fun the walls are.

[CharlieChomper]

I love your use of color!

That bathroom has such a nice elegance to it, while the kitchen is quite chic in the use of color and design, and the hallway seems like such a fun space!

The brick pattern almost reminds me of styles that were popular during a couple periods of history--most "recently" during the early part of the twentieth century through the 1930s, as part of the "Jacobean Revival" style that flourished in some places (sometimes combined with Tudor elements or incorrectly cited as just Tudor Revival). It's one type of "diapering" (believe it or not, that's the actual name for it regardless of what type of bond or bricks it uses or the actual pattern(s), itself/themselves).

Although, I personally love the colors you used and they're more interesting and bring it out more.

[Felicity]

Steph! I just love ALL of it! Your attention to detail is awesome! And have to say that entryway is gorgeous! So different and I like the colours you have chosen!

Felicity

[Jessica]

What a lovely house! I think you have elegant quite well grasped, even if you say you don't! I could never decorate in such a chic way! The pink bricks sure attract attention and make for a very original entrance. I love that sofa you had fun with and the pattern on it too. Lovely reading nook.

[Moon]

You never leave a surface or a wall untouched, do you? Everything always ties in so nicely, even with the styles are totally different.

[andavri]

I totally thought I had said thank you to you guys! *half dies of embarrassment* I'm so sorry.

Thanks, guys. I have tried to get away from being overly matchy, but that has lead to it's own problems. Seriously when I stepped back and looked at what I'd done in the entryway I started wondering about me. A lot. It's nice to hear that you guys like it!

So after I finished up Jess' av shoot, (I REALLY need to code up the pages for everyone.) I didn't want to get out and load TS2 to finish Felicity's up, I was feeling lazy, so I decided I'd do the next step here.

This room totally didn't turn out at all how I thought it would. Just totally did not at all in the slightest.


From the door to the entryway. I chose a warm neutrals + blues palette because blue is a color that both Kienna and Sugar like and if they spend a lot of time in this room, which I imagine they do/will, they'd want it to be comfortable and homey.


Off toward the bathroom wall and catching a little of Sugar's corner of the room.


This is Kienna's space, obviously, comfy chair for reading garden tips and boards online, shelf with gardening tools and flowerboxes. Also a big ottoman with a huge floral display. (What can I say, she really likes plants. When I was thinking to myself "what would Kienna's "passion" be, I saw plants more than family. *shrugs*)


And Sugar's area. She's a bookworm, so computer for writing stories, a comfy chair for reading books, stacks of books, shelf space and knickknacks, cause I see Sugar very much being a collector of things.


Back toward the door into the room.


And overview of the room, so you can see just how nuts I went designing the floor. The walls are just supposed to be a sorta plaster look, when I recolored it the speckling got darker. All of the wood in the room matches, the furniture styles don't necessarily, but I wanted something to keep the room tied together, As I didn't use the same colors or styles of furniture, I figured that would be something small to give me some continuity.

I'm not 100% sold on the very light linen curtains either. They're more or less the same shade as the white-ish marble on the floor (Which I did four and four of. Four different tile designs and also four different patterns on the tiles, I wasn't sure which Kiri meant, so I figured it worked.) I was trying to keep them neutral, but I think I'd have been better off with a blue. Kinda have to laugh, according to the profiles I put together Kienna's favorite color is red, and I used red only on the lamp and the record player. And I have brown as Sugar's and I still haven't really used a brown for her. I used a kinda peach and a couple of shades of gold but not brown.

As I've been working on stuff for them they've kinda evolved, and I'm not sure that I'd choose those colors for them if I were creating them again in CAS.

Anyway, hopefully it won't take me quite so long to put together the next room, but I'm finishing up Felicity's av first!
~Steph