Grandma's House- Entry for A Stroll Down Memory Lane

My Grandmothers House! Recreated in the Sims 3!

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The Real House

The Sims Version!

Okay So this is the perfect place to talk about the cars! Okay so the house comes with three cars, the other one is in the garage, that’s my grandma’s car, she still drives at her age! So the other cars in the driveway are my aunts and mine. Well sort of. The blue old fashion car is mine. My car and I share a birthday. It's a '89 Toyota Camry, and it's got some life to it still. I love that car. I worked all freshmen year to save up for it, and finally half way through the summer I had enough money to get him, his name is Danby. One of the first road trips I ever took with him, was to a small little town in the middle of nowhere called Danby. A friend and I went to the small town fair there to volunteer with the local science museum to teach kids about basic scientific concepts though making and playing with toys. We had a blast and everyone was so friendly to us. That was only two weeks after I got my car, and I knew it was the perfect way to honor the day. Everyone I know always asks me how Danby is doing. Strangers always think we are talking about a pet.

Now the purple truck, now that’s legendary. My Aunt was known for her big purple truck. That’s her always breaking gender norms! She loved that truck, and everyone in town knew it was her. When I was young she had to sell it, but I always remember it. She's had three other purple trucks since that one and she has loved them all. It's her thing. She doesn't have one at the moment, but I'm sure she will have another one in the future! Oh and yes the driveway is actually that big! In my life time they have extened the things twice! The most recent time was about 6 years back when my Aunt decided she was going to start her own lawn care business (Lady Lawn Care). It went very well the first summer and then as soon as winter hit, not so much, so she attempted to do snow plowing as well. That is where the big black truck in the google picture comes from. She sold the last purple truck and bought this giant one and a snowplow attachment. Long story short that didn't go so well, and when you get sun approximately 70 days a year (not even kidding we hit some kind of record a few years back for least amount of sun) a lawn care business is probably not going to be sustainable. 

Overhead View of the First Floor:

 Lets Take a Tour, Shall We!

Good, you can see my grandmother's car now from this view. So let’s start there with the garage. In the winter we move out most of the furniture and pull up the rug and use it as a garage, I decided to create it that way, since that is how it is right now. However in the summer, the car stays outside and the garage is converted into another family room type area.

Attached to that in the back in the back porch, this is the family we use in the winter, and all year round as well. When the house was originally built it had an open porch, I think they remodeled it sometime in the 70's to enclose the whole thing. About 18 years ago or so, my aunt claimed the right most section of the room for her own office space and she paid to have it remodel. The first remodeling job that wasn't done by family.

Okay, but let’s start back in the beginning. We don't use our front door, ever we use the garage door. So when you walk into the house you walk in through the garage and right into the kitchen. However if instead of going through the kitchen, you walked into the door in front of you, you would head downstairs to the basement, but more on that later.

Once you walk through the kitchen, you enter into the hallway, which attaches most of the house. The room on your left or the room at the top left corner of the picture is the Living Room. We don't use that very often. It gets decorated for Christmas and we spend that day in it, but otherwise it's left alone fairly often.

The room across from it on the right is the dining room. We also don't use that room very often, again really only at Christmas time. We usually either eat in the kitchen or in the summer there is another table set up, where we normally eat in the garage. And of course through there you can enter the porch, but for now let’s move on down the hallway.

The small bedroom on the left is where I would sleep when I was a child. It's used as storage/ a guest bedroom these days. It's also how you get to the attic. But since they don't have pull down staircases in the sims, I left it be.

The room nextdoor is my grandmother's bedroom. Nicely decorated with pinks.

Directly across from that is the hallway closet, with the only full body mirror in the entire house on the door. The "rooms" directly behind it are my Aunt's closet and the closet in the dining room. Their is a close in the dining room, because when my grandmother's children were little, the room was the boy's room.

The next room on the right is my Aunt Carol's bedroom. The purples are imaginary, in real life they are blues, but My aunt told me she would help me out and take some pictures for me if when I made her room I would put some purple in it.

The last room is of course the bathroom.

Overhead View of basement:

 

So when you walk downstairs, you walk into the main portion of the basement. There is small bathroom, but my favorite part of the basement is when you walk into the furnished room. It's beautiful! My aunt did an amazing job remodeling it! She did most of it herself and hired a few people to do the pumbing and drywall.

I remember helping with the remodel. All my younger cousins and I would spend the weekends over there helping out. It was a nice bonding experience, since even though we live so close we don't see each other all that often. Even though we are only three years apart, my cousins and I seem pretty distant age wise. Because of how our birthday's feel and the fact I graduated early, he is a senior in high school and I'm already a year out of college. We we've always seemed to be in different places in our lives. I love them though and would do anything for them. There actually going through a hard time right now so I keep them in my thoughts always.

The bottom? what I would consider right side of the room, was meant to be a party room. It has an actual professional bar, It closed two years after I was born, but my family owned a bar...well kind of technically it was a bar/motel/banquet room/ and pizza shop (I'm not kidding). They owned it for I think almost 40 years or so. It was called the country inn. that is part of the bar. So anyway it was never suppose to be a bedroom, but my amazing aunt gave up here special room, for me to have a place to life when I would come home from school on breaks. 

 Real Entrance Way

 

Sims Entrance Way

Welcome to the House, This is the first thing you see when you walk into my Grandmother's house. Please ignore the giant green sims tool. I took this photo in build mode and didn't snap another one.  

Real Life Door To the basement

 

Sims Door to the Basement

 This is what it looks like when you open the door to the basement. But we are not going to head now there quite yet. Lets take a look at the kitchen instead! 

Real Life Kitchen:

 Sims Version Kitchen:

 

So Next We walk into the Hallway

Real Hallway:

 

 Sims Hallway:

 

 And Now The Living Room

Real

 

 The perpective on this photo is off, the wedding picture is behind the couch, not on the partial wall next to the door.

 Sims

 Real

  

Sims

 

 Real

  

Sims:

 I decided that even though it's not accurate to the photo, to add the old record player in instead. While I was growing up, there was this old record player there that my grandma would always use, especially around Christmas time. I used to love playing with the old records and moving the needle on the player. I also have an adorable memory of a girlfriend of mine and I dancing crazily to "Yellow-Poke-a-dot Bikini"

The Dining Room Real

Sims

 Small Bedroom  Real

 

Sims 

Grandmother's Room Real

 Sims Version

 

  

Aunt Carol's Room Real

 

Sims (Told yo the purple was imaginary!)

 

BathRoom Real

 

Sims 

 

Back Porch Real

 Baby Me!

 Back Porch Sims

 My Aunts Office section of Porch Sims

Garage Real

Garage Sims

 Basement Real:

Basement Sims

Furnished Basement Real

Furnished Sims: It came out a little too dark

No Pictures, but still a part of the house-The Garden:

Way back decades before I was born my family owned acres of land behind the house. Apparently my great grandfather (so my grandmother’s father-in-law) had a huge garden, where he planted everything imaginable that could grow in this climate, and apparently some that you couldn’t. After his passing most of that was sold off and is now a golf course. By time I came around what was left, where two apples trees, a pear tree, and the grape vines. My grandfather (my grandmother’s husband) used to make his own wine in the basement. They’ve grown into disrepair now and the fruiting grapes are too high to reach, every August I’ll walk down there and collect about a handful of the sweetest tasting grapes in the world.

Story of why this place is special to you:
This house was built in 1954, while my grandmother was pregnant with my mother, her second of four children. The house was built by her husband and his father. It was originally her husband’s family stable. When you are in the basement, you can still see the beams from the original stable, which dates back as far as the early 1900’s. She lived one house away from her in-laws, with and her sister-in-law living in-between.

When my grandmother was first married, she lived in the apartment above her in-laws. She found the experience to be insufferable, for many reasons. Beginning with the fact that her in-laws spoke almost no English, and ending with the fact there was very little ventilation in the upstairs apartment and she was pregnant with her first child over the summer. She was nearly traumatized by the stairs leading up to the apartment. They were usually infested with various types of bees and other insects. She can still vividly recall the feeling of the oppressive heat as she would walk up them. So the reason this portion of the story was important is when they were building the house, my grandmother asked for it to be only one story so she did not have to walk up stairs all the time. There is a basement with stairs, but to her that was different. She is the only ranch-style house on her street, but with the addition of an enclosed porch and furnished section of the basement; it’s much larger inside than meets the eye.

If walls could talk, that house has been through quite a bit over the past sixty years or so. It’s been through an anxious family waiting to see if their eldest son would be called off to war, to intense 80’s black light parties, to visits from Santa Claus. This is where my grandmother has lived out the majority of her life; her home is a part of her. It was made for her, specifically to her liking, and she has been in charge of the décor and design since the very beginning.

My grandmother’s children grew up, the men got married. Before I came along my grandmother had four other grandchildren. Her eldest son had four sons of his own. Years later her youngest son also had a son, and two other sons followed. I feel right in the middle and just happened to be the only female of the bunch. When I was a baby, my grandmother would have me stay over at her house on Friday nights, because my mother had to work the night shift. This just sort of became a tradition. For my entire childhood I would always stayed at my grandmother’s on Friday’s. I remember when I got to grade school, I would take a different bus on Friday’s to go to my Grandmother’s. I used to love it, because instead of spending 45 minutes on a stinky bus, I only had to spend 15 and I got to sit with one of my girlfriends from class.

I used to love Fridays! I also remember my grandmother would let me stay up to watch TGIF with her. We would sit in the back porch and watch television together. When I was a very young child, we used to watch the Dinosaurs and apparently I used to giggle during the opening credits. I don’t really remember the Dinosaurs all that much, but I remember some of the other ones. I remember there were these three shows: Early Edition, which was about a guy who got the newspaper a day early and came on at 8PM. A show called Samo? Or something to that effect about a martial arts person that came on at 9PM, and Walker Texas Ranger with Chuck Norris which came on at 10PM. As I got older, I got to stay up later and watch the next show. I felt like such a big girl when I finally was able to stay up and watch the 10PM show. Another thing I used to love was my grandma would give me piggy back rides from the couch to my bedroom, which is now the small guest bedroom, before she would tuck me in ever friend.

I also lived at my grandmother’s house during various parts of my life. When I was in 1st grade, I lived with her and stayed in my little bedroom while my parents slept on a mattress in the garage, which is converted twice a year to either house the car for the winter or turn into a living room type area for the family. We only lived there for a few months before my parents found another house to rent.

Then around 6th grade, I didn’t necessarily live there per say, but I kind of did. I slept there every night, because my mother was spending the night next door with my great aunt (my grandmother’s sister-in-law), who had unfortunately developed Alzheimer’s. This went on for about a year, before her (my great aunt’s) children decided it was no longer responsible for her to live independently and arranged to put her into a nursing home.

One of the best parts about my grandmother’s house is that it comes with a bonus. Not only do I get to spend time with my grandmother, but I also get to spend time with her youngest daughter, my Aunt Carol. My Aunt Carol has been a major influence in my life. She was the one who always made sure I was keeping my life on track. She had high hopes of me being the first person in our family to graduate from college or even attend a four year college. She is an incredibly strong woman. Actually, all of the women in my life are strong. I was raised by my mother, my aunt and my grandmother. I am so thankful for this, I am who I am today because of them.

My Aunt is a technician for an atm and currency counting machine company. She is currently the only female in her company, with the exception of the secretary, and she was the first women to ever join the (my city) branch of the company. She is a qualified technician, but I’ve watched the struggles she has faced in her very male-dominated workplace. I grew up knowing that I wanted to be just like her. Not necessarily a technician, but someone who can stay strong even in the face of adversity.

I technically moved out of my mom’s house when I was 16, when I started college. I never really moved back. I spent a few weeks of the January intersession there my freshmen year, but that was really the last time I lived there. At that point, I officially lived at school and during breaks I would come home and stay in my grandmother’s newly furnished basement. My aunt furnished it about 6 or so years ago. I decided to create the furnished version because that is still one place that feels like home to me.

My grandmother’s (and Aunt’s) house has always been a stable and secure place filled with joy and more carefree times. I am forever indebted to the amazing women who shaped my life and world views. I am thankful that my 84 years young grandmother is still healthy and vibrant. She even still goes to work once a week at her son’s pizza shop, something she has been doing for the past 15 years of so. When I say I am going home, I actually mean I am going to my grandmother’s house. It is my home.

The How did I do that! Section:

Connecting a house with foundation to a functional Garage:

This one I needed a tutorial. And let me tell you it was not easy! But this video tutorial is very helpful and takes you through each step of attaching the garage. I also attached the back porch, which made even more complicated!

Watch the Youtube video tutorial here

Building a basement with a foundation:

The most important part about this is you have to build the basement FIRST! After I finally figured out how to connect the garage I had to completely rebuild the house after placing the basement first! I browsed some tutorials but I didn't find any of them to be particularly help. I'm sure there are amazing ones out there, but none of the one's I found through Google were helpful. Basically you need to place the stairs the way they are placed in the picture. You first put up your normal stairs downstairs and then and a small set of stairs connecting them to the foundation, with at least one space apart, so the Sims can access it.

Adding "Shutters" To a Double Wide Window:

 From far away you don't notice the writing. Anyway this is the Lunar Year Poster from the Lunar New Year, Year of The Tiger Set. 

Click Here to See it in The Store

You can buy the entire Year of The Tiger Set with 5 items for 100 points or you can get just the poster for 25

Anyway with moveobjects on cheat I manipulated the posters to look like shutters, especially from farther away. The best part is the background is recolorable so you can make them whatever shade you would like!

How to put a Tube TV on a surface, like a dresser:

If you use the perfect pedestal, which is located at the bottom of the misc object section. You can place the tube TV on top of it, and use moveobjects on to put it into a surface (like a desk, dresser, counter top). It didn't look as good as it could have with this dresser, but I was trying to be accurate to both!

How to give the allusion of doors without actually using doors:

 I used the Gear Stow Locker from the Ambitions EP and moveobjects on to place the locker behind the wall so the only thing showing were the doors. It was perfect for what I needed it for! It's great too, because what we keep behind those doors is tools, flashlights, and batteries! exactly what you would expect from those gear stow lockers!

 How did I make the shelves above the toilet

 I used moveobjects on to place two columns on either side of the toilet. Any column will do, but I used the Modcol from the base game. Then I used the medicine cabinet decoration from misc decor and place two of them overlapping each other to give the appearance of shelves.

Alright Everyone My Grandmother has sat down and read the paper now so it's time to clear out of her house! Hope you Enjoy my Stroll down Memory Lane! Thank you Itguyinsc for making it possible! *Hugs*