Whoops, I Did it Again...

Hi! I do still plan on doing more of the One Room Challenges, but am taking a break from this because, "OMG NEW HOUSE!!!". 

A little backstory...due to circumstances that are not mine to share, I had to move parcels suddenly. I went from a four seasons sim in the middle of winter in February, to an "All beach, all the time" sim. My little winter cottage wasn't going to cut it on this parcel, and I decided I wanted something long, low, modern, and sexy to replace it. 

I rezzed every house I have, which is a lot, and nothing struck me. I went shopping, and didn't find anything that ticked all the boxes. So I put out an old standby in the meantime, the "St. Paul 2021" from Scarlet Creative, which is pretty much the antithesis of what I was looking for, but it was loved and familiar, so I was still happy with it. It is the height of bright, shabby Mediterranean vacation chic, as you can see below.)

Then, while wandering around this month's Uber (open through May 22nd), I found it. The "Sea Side Long House" from D-Lab. It was (mostly) everything I was looking for. I bought it on a whim, then had a moment of panic that it would be TOO long for my parcel, but it just fits. I'll have to swizzle around my landscaping a bit, but that's not a big deal. (On that note...home designers...PLEASE include the house's dimensions in your ads, and/or provide a floorplan cut-out demo that we can take with us to make sure your house will work on our parcels. Thanks!) 

Here it is! 

The front of it is spartan and uninviting to say the least, but from a privacy standpoint, it's great. But the back of the house is the real gem...all those windows...nothing but view! Upon going inside and walking the house, the main thing I noticed was that there wasn't really space for a kitchen, which for me is an issue because I adore kitchens. I wandered out to the patio area over on the left, tried a few things out, and decided to enclose it, and make it the kitchen. 

Now, the key to modding a house like this, is to try and make it look intentional. You want it to blend, you want the textures to match. You want to make it look like the creator themselves had done it as much as possible. 

When I mod a house like this, I tend to go to a sandbox, and rez two copies. The one I'm going to add to, and the one I'm going to unlink and rip apart for walls, windows, beams, doors, whatever I can scrounge and make work. When doing this work, it's best to do it in a bright, shadowless environment, so that if you have to tint things, you're seeing it a good light, and the chances of it matching are much better. 

After some (OK, a lot of) finagling, here is the finished product. I am incredibly pleased with how it came out. 

I won't detail everything I did, but I'll point out the main parts, to give you an idea. 

Do you see the slatted portion on the right? I wanted to mirror that on the wall of the enclosure.

Obviously, the kitchen wall needed to be solid, so grabbed a copy of the wall below where the orange arrow is pointing. It's lighter on the outside, but the inside matches the texture of other inside walls, so it worked out perfect.  For the sliding doors that lead out to the deck, I grabbed copies of two of the windows where the yellow arrow is pointing, and sized them to fit. I ended up having to remove the scripts in those doors, as when you would open them, they'd open up the living room doors as well. I very simply replaced that script with one I had in my inventory, and it works fine and there are no conflicts. 

This is the inside view...I am considering adding a tile floor, but haven't found just the right texture. I was unable to stretch the floor as it has baked-in shading, so I need to find something in the same spirit. I also edited the former outside doors to keep them back, and leave the walkthrough open. 

So, I think that's enough for now. There are still some fine tuning tweaks to make, but in the next post we'll be getting into the fun part...decorating! I hope you stay for this little journey, and have fun with me as I put it all together. Now to go inworld, take down the old house, and get the parcel ready to go. TTYL!