

Finally, add some stairs to the front and back porches so your Sims can get inside. I like relatively low foundations, especially on more modern builds, but the sky’s the limit (literally). Click and hold that cube and drag it up until your foundation is the height you like. Inside the room, you’ll see a cube with two arrows pointing up and down. To raise your starter home’s foundation, click on any room to select it. (Plus, if you have the Seasons EP, you can decorate your home’s foundation to give it a festive feel.) But this simple trick can add a delightful level of detail to your custom starter homes. I’ve been playing TS4 since it was first released, and it’s taken me all eight years to figure out how to add foundations to my builds. Leave at least three tiles between the sides of the house and the edge of the lot in case you decide to add a fence later. Aim for the center of the lot, leaving a little more room in the back than the front for a backyard. PRO TIP: In Build Mode, you can press “U” on your keyboard to select the “move house” tool, then click on your shell to rotate or reposition it on the lot. And don’t worry too much about the interior walls – you can always move or remove them later. Click inside the rooms to select and move them around until you like how your shell looks. Then draw two smaller rectangles on the outside of the main rectangle. Use the Room Tool to make one medium-sized square room (roughly 6 x 6 tiles) near the center of your lot.

Make all your builds more interesting and realistic by adding a couple more rectangles to your rectangle. Unless you’re an architect, realtor, or interior designer, your first thought is probably to build a simple rectangular house. Start by building your shell, essentially your house’s outline.
