Welcome to the Home Plan Conversion Tutorial by Bex. In this tutorial, you will learn how to choose house plans from websites and convert them into Sims2 lots. A little planning will go a long way, and though we can't convert the houses exactly, if we choose the right plan, we can come very close.

First, go to a website that hosts house designs. You can find them easily by doing a quick search of "home plans."

There are so many sites, and you'll eventually find one that is your favorite. For now, explore them, look at houses and get ideas. They can inspire a design of your own, or you can copy it exactly, like we will do in this tutorial.

There are several things to look for- staircases can be the first sign of an adaptable house. Unless you have OFB, you'll need a house with straight a staircase. If you've built quite a few lots before, other things will tip you off.

Garages are the second thing you'll notice. Unless you want to close a garage in and turn it into something else, you'll need a garage that faces forward. A lot of home plans show garages that are on the sides of houses. There is a way to use a sideways garage, but that's another lesson. Since I'm using NL as the highest EP, I'll choose a single, front garage.

The thing to remember about garages is to cut the number in half. If you see a plan for two garages, it will probably only fit 1 sim car (unless you're lucky).

When you find the house you want to build, you'll know. But it's not just the houseplans you'll need because real life plans need to be adapted to our sim building codes. Graph paper is your best friend when planning out pre-made houses.

The first sign will be the outside- just by looking at it you'll not only know if you'd want a sim house like it, but if it is possible to build within the game.

I kinda like this one- it seems adaptable enough- now lets check out the inside.

Look at the stairs and kitchen for scale. Staircases are 1x4 and you can see from this one that you can easily tuck the steps back into the storage area. The bathroom is 2x2. The kitchen is a great judge of size: fridge= 1 square, so does the counter, stove, corner counter, sink, and counter of this kitchen. You can make the island, but this should be enough for your sims.

The desk and pantry will have to be reworked, and as you can see, and the garage is too small for 2 sim cars. It comes out to be 7x8, but you'll have to extend it to 7x9 in the game to allow for that door to the kitchen.

Obviously we'll have to play with the upstairs a bit. Closets are useless, but can be converted for room for a dresser. Also, we don't need a utility/wash room... these rooms always make for good office areas or in this case, an open area overlooking the downstairs. And the toilet in the hall bathroom is too close to the tub. Because we have to extend the garage, this can easily be fixed.

Grab a piece of graph paper. I like the 10x10 squares because the bold lines perfectly outline the size of Sim lots (2x3 = 20x30 etc.), however the 4x4 and 5x5 are fine.

Do a quick sketch of the house adapting it for the game. I took out the desk and pantry to make room for a sim dining table and chairs. The stairs were moved forward, the garage extended. I did keep the garage width, deciding that the space on the sides were needed because of the upstairs area.

The second floor was adapted- the two front bedrooms had to be pushed forward 1 space. This allowed for the extra room needed in the hallway bathroom, but I decided to extend the master bathroom instead. By simply putting a sink and toilet on one side and the bathtub on the other, the hallway bath fit well and so I was able to install a shower next to the tub in the master suite.

You may notice the faint lines- I always start the second floor sketch with a light version of the bottom floor walls (at least, the ones that effect the upstairs).

Okay... we have our house plan and our sketches, lets open up our Sims 2 game.

When choosing a lot size, the graph paper comes in really handy. This lot has a garage, so the garage door has to be 8 spaces from the sidewalk, another 9 for the garage itself, then 6 for the kitchen. Yet the house is rather narrow. Why waste a 3x4 when we can go with a 2x4 (if you have NL that is).

I like to plot out my house with a cheap floor. This one is so cheap it costs nothing! The squares on it will help be layout the walls when the time comes. They're so helpful, and available at the UBERsimmers Yahoo group. When I started this tutorial I was already building on a 2x3, but when laying out the shape of the house with these floor tiles, I realized it would leave me with very little back yard space. It saved me lots of time since I was in my first step.

Once the basic shape of the house has been laid out, start putting in walls. So far, this is turning out great.

Windows help so much- try to do the front door and main windows early, so they will brighten the rooms. Go ahead and put in the garage floor and door. Place the staircase.

Now for the upstairs- See how I extended the master bathroom? I also went ahead and closed in the upper hall area so we can work on the roofing.

Here's where it gets tricky. I want the roof to look like the photo- but now I'm starting to think that's not possible. Well, not entirely. With the average roof pitch, we can't have the upper front windows. So we'll have to adjust. I entered the cheat:

roofslopeangle 35

Makes it a bit flat, but it's what we'll need to have the windows. Also, the second story roof will have to be turned to the front like this- the way it is in the picture just isn't possible in the game.

Fill in the top roof then add the special front sections.

The trick for this is- A roof edge will disappear if a roof is placed over top of it. So stretching out this chuck of roof as a 3x4 will put a roof in the bedroom, but it will work since there's a roof above it. That way we have a nice extended roof on the last 1x3 section on the left that matches the rest of the roof.

Can you see how the roof invaded the room? We'll fix that in a second.

Go ahead and put in more windows. It's now that I like to go back and delete the inner painting of the roof walls (since they are usually the outter wall and thus more expensive).

See, this is what happens when you try that roof trick. But...

Simply delete it! I'm not too fond of the window being partially covered by the roof, but it makes it look like the picture, so, why not.

Hmmm. We're going to have a problem with the staircase. The upper area won't be possible to simply open up. Especially for Seasons since you need every room to have a proper roof or your sims will get rained on.

One option is to creat a dormer by deleting all surrounding walls, but that may look funny on the exterior.