So... you've got the most wonderful new sim and you can't wait to move her into your neighborhood. That's great! But you forgot that she needs a house... and you can't build. Or you think you can't build. It's OK. None of us could, once upon a time.

Come with me while I fix up a few of my old ones. I'll show you a couple of easy ways to make your house look better.

Here's a familiar sight. I've built dozens of houses that looked like this - and called them good. You too? Did you use motherlode to fix it? I did. But the branch of Motherlode Bank in my game went out of business a long time ago, when I stopped using money cheats. They made the game boring.

The secret to building a visually interesting house is the roof. Auto-roof is an amazing tool, but it can only work with what it's given. If you want to create a great-looking roofline using Auto-roof, you'll have to change the shape of your house. This one is your typical beginner's shoebox shape - 10 x 5 tiles. It's a good beginning for a starter home (a house that costs less than $20,000 furnished). But it isn't big enough.

I added a 4x5 bedroom to my shoebox. The original space will be used for living, dining, and the kitchen.

A little 2x3 bathroom is big enough to hold a toilet, shower, sink, and door. I like the bathroom to be centralized. So far, I've spent $8230 for the 3x3 lot and walls.

A click of the short gable Auto-roof gives this result. Because of the bedroom/bathroom addition in the back of the house, it has to cross the original gable with a second one in order to cover the whole house. This roof is much more interesting than my original one.

I like the back of the house even more. But I don't like the way the roof ridges sit. See, at the top, where the back gables are higher than the main gable? Yuck. But it's easy enough to fix. I'll just make the kitchen/living area temporarily deeper so that Auto-roof will have to bring it out a little further. The more distance it has to cover, the higher the roof will be.

I built some temporary walls around the area where the back door to the yard will be. I don't want the new roof to be a lot higher. I especially don't want Auto-roof to build a big square, either, so I made the temporary room a different depth than the existing ones to keep it staggered.

This is a much tidier ridge. Once I remove the temporary walls, I'll have a cute little overhang above the back door to make a covered porch.

Like so.

An inexpensive column supports the overhang and provides visual balance. My starter home is finished. All I need to do now is add some doors and windows and color everything.

I play Seasons, so I added a stream for fishing before moving in my sim. It doesn't raise the price of the house but, if I did it after moving in a sim, he'd have to pay for it. The grass and "Tiny Pebbles" terrain paints that I used on the driveway area and front walk are free now, too.

Yeah, I got a little carried away. What can I say? It was fun. But I wanted to show you that, even if you spend a little bit more than you thought you could afford, you can still build a decent-looking starter without going broke. My former shoebox is now a roomy, comfortable little house with everything a sim might need - including a $2200 bed and mid-priced stove that will last a lifetime and send her off to work well-rested. A halfwall separates the living area and kitchen.

I also included fire and burglar alarms, a phone, and objects for learning every skill. The price: $19,577.

But what if your sim's house is already a box? Can you make it look better without spending a fortune?

Yes, but you have to decide if it's worth it. If you really like the house and it has a playable floorplan, then I'd say "Do it". Let's look at one of my old shoeboxes.

OK. The rooms are laid out well, and aren't too big. That's good. It's nice and bright. I like that too. The rooms in back - bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen - don't have much space to spare but we can improve the facade.

First step: take off the shoebox lid... err... roof.

The dining room seats six, a good size for a family or for a sim who likes to invite friends for dinner.

This house is too close to the sidewalk to expand in front, so we'll have to work with the shapes of the front rooms.

I cut diagonals to remove the corners in here. We won't lose much space, just half a tile on each side of the room. A diagonal wall is one tile; a corner is two, so we're actually halving the price of the room's corners.

I did the same in the living room, then tucked the door into the room on a two-tile straight section of wall. I then cut off the corners and repainted everything.

Outside, I removed the old section of wall where the door used to be...

...and then the old floor.

Inside, I traded the doors for arches to improve traffic flow between the dining room and the other rooms.

I did the same between the dining room and kitchen. Arches work especially well in little houses because they contain fire and noise as well as doors do, but without a door's swing.

The hipped Auto-roof goes back on and it now looks very different from the original house.

I like this color better.

A short concrete walkway ties it to the street.

Total tiles lost: 4.
Money saved: about $300.

Cutting off the corners is the fastest, easiest, least expensive way to improve the look of your shoebox when you use Auto-roof.

How did this get in here? It's embarassing to admit it, but I once operated under the assumption that throwing money at a house would make it look better. It certainly won't hurt, but "This Old Box" proves that it's more important where you throw the money than how much you spend. It's perfectly square, 10x10 tiles. I'm too embarassed to show you the inside, but it's split perfectly into quarters. You can see the backs of the counters and headboard through the windows. Let's fix the exterior.

First, I want to give the facade some character. The fastest way to do that is to bump out the entrance by one tile. I built a 4x1 box to surround the double door.

A bit of siding and a short gable Auto-roof add a little charm. The pine is to balance the chimney and the shuttered window breaks up that awful, huge roof. I pulled the shutters' color down by adding blue shrubs, then grounded all the plants with garden soil paint.

The back of "This Old Box" is just as bad. Horizontal symmetry is nice, but it has to work vertically too. There's just too much roof above these windows.

Easy fix: move a couple of windows. But now I've got a big dead space below them.

Another easy fix: plant a bushy tree and some shrubs to fill the empty spot. It's still symmetrical, but now there's better balance.

I'm still embarassed, too, so I'm moving on. Coming?

This shoebox was one of my favorite starters ever because it has two bedrooms and a basement. The edging around the shrubs probably drove the gardener nuts, though. It'll have to come out.

I moved the shrubs, too, so they'll be out of the way while I fix this box. I don't want to raise the price at all and it's just the right distance from the sidewalk for a 3x2 lot, so I'll work from the inside to change the roof.

I'd like a second gable to cover the triple windows and the door, then maybe a roof above the double window and a little extension over the porch.

The first step is always to take the lid off the box.

The main roof is going to be shortened one tile so that I can do cute things with the facade. I drew a temporary wall across the front, one tile away from the permanent one.

This is the little section beside the double window - the one that I don't want a second gable to cover. As long as it isn't enclosed, Auto-roof will think it's outside and leave it alone. I took out just one section of the permanent wall to trick the game.

I drew a second temporary wall beside the door - the part that I want to be covered by another gable.

...and it worked. You can see that the short gable Auto-roof only covered the door and triple windows, thinking that the area above the double window was outside. The main part of the roof is recessed and the smaller gable is flush with the facade.

A mansard shed roof above the double window will keep out the weather.

All that's left is to replace the wall section I removed to fool Auto-roof.

A third short gable, drawn along the empty grid, will act as a porch roof.

Much more interesting, yes? All that's left to do now is clean up.

I took out the temporary inside walls and touched up the paint in the living room.

A railing will give the porch a more finished look, I think. We can't have toddlers falling off, can we?

With a touch of garden soil under the shrubs, my former shoebox is one of my favorite starters again. I can picture a whole suburban development's worth of these.

There's nothing wrong with building a shoebox if it works. But now you know that it doesn't take much time, money, or work to make it a cute shoebox. Thanks for reading! ~ Polly

Tutujoy2 built this amazing replica of her own house and many other beautiful sim homes. I added this picture with her permission to show you how your little shoebox can grow into something really fabulous. Thanks, Tutu!