For Blue Soup, who gave me Mountainside Village and saved my story too.

Hello again! We're back on Blue Soup's Mountainside Village island terrain to build some more vacation houses for our hard-working sims. We'll go play in a minute, but first I want to explain some basic techniques. Quite a few players have asked me for instructions to build a basement, so we'll cover that first - both types.

Build a foundation in the size and shape you want for your house.

Core your foundation by removing the center to leave just a frame, then go down to the lowest level.

Select a paint with a kick molding and apply it to a section of foundation. Lower a square of terrain to the kick molding (12 mouse-clicks).

From your level square, click and drag to lower the terrain...

...within your entire frame.

You should test the depth of your basement by building a section of wall. If you get the covered by floor tile or attached to wall message, you'll need to adjust your depth.

When the wall fits, you've got a basic basement - or what I call a storage basement.

Unfortunately, you can't hang anything on these walls without using the moveobjects on cheat. I'll show you how to build a basement with "hangable" walls.

Undo your test wall...

...then demolish your foundation, leaving the pit.

Using the room tool, build a box around your leveled terrain inside the pit.

Starting at an outside corner (on the slope), draw a foundation wall in the ditch surrounding your room.

Do the same thing on each wall, so that you've built a frame around your room.

Now you don't need to cheat to hang objects on your walls.

If you need more help, feel free to sign my guestbook. Now let's go play!

Here's a quick little project for your sim who likes to "get away from it all" at home - a second-story patio with pool. This cozy little carriage house costs just $18,564 unfurnished and can be built without cheats.

Here's how...

Start by using your medium-sized shovel. Raise a mound of terrain 12 clicks on the spot where you want to put your pool.

From the top of your mound, drag a square of foundation as far into the corner as it will go.

Test the height by building a section of wall against your foundation. If the game won't let you do it, you'll need to adjust the height of the mound.

When you've got the correct height, drag from your foundation square to the opposite corner of the property as far as you can.

Now for the fun part. We're going to sculpt this block of foundation into a house. First, though, you should pop this lot in and out of your Lots & Houses Bin to clone it. We'll need it again.

All set? OK - demolish the corner over the mound where you want your pool. I'm taking off a 7-wide by 6-high section.

You can drag out your pool now, making sure to leave one terrain tile free on the outside edges.

When you're happy with the pool, replace your foundation corner.

Carve out your sunken patio, leaving a portion of the foundation for a walkway and steps...

...then level the terrain to the height of your pool.

Now for the house. Peel off the part of your foundation that you don't need anymore.

Replace it with walls and lay flooring on the roof.

Back at ground level, you can remove a 7-tile section of the room for a driveway if you play Nightlife.

A driveway is 5 tiles wide by 8 deep, so this gives us a little room to play on either side.

For a carport, I dragged out some foundation along the driveway...

...then took some nips from the wall to make it look like columns.

I fell in love with this fence from MTS2, so I'm going to add little sections between my columns.

Now we'll need to replace the upstairs flooring over them...

...and build the second floor walls.

Connecting stairs provide access to your patio.

This corner was bothering me so I took it off.

What? It's my house! You can carve yours any way you like.

I also added a railing so my sims won't fall off.

Tiny, isn't it? Planting beds soften the corners of your patio. I used flowerbed edging to fence off the corners, then laid my floor.

I then removed the edging and added some pool accessories. Sims like pool ladders for some reason, so please don't forget.

Back upstairs, I used the same flooring on the deck and inside the house. I also made the upstairs a little bigger by butting the wall against the patio edge. You can install your staircase now, and build some walls to make individual rooms.

A coat of sunny stucco from TazziannaLuck's simpage, along with a brick driveway and matching flooring and some windows from MTS2 creates a semi-formal look for your little carriage house. I drew a mansard shed roof above the entry, redesigned the mailbox, and hid the trashcan between the "columns" using the moveobjects on cheat.

Need a bigger house?

One of the best things about using foundation instead of walls is the price. A block of foundation costs $4, whereas a section of wall costs $70. This shady little courtyard condo on the beach costs less than $15,000 unfurnished. It's bigger than it looks from the street, too - you'll see.

You can take your building block out of the Lots & Houses Bin now and plant it somewhere in the neighborhood. Then level the mound you raised for your pool.

Carve out your driveway. Remember - it's 8 tiles from the sidewalk and 5 tiles wide.

You'd better cut out six tiles so you can build a garage. The remaining foundation on the left side will form one of the garage walls and cars don't like to drive through it.

Install your driveway.

Carve out your courtyard...

...and the garage.

You'll need to move your driveway against the courtyard wall, then add your extension.

You'll also need a wall for the garage door.

With your garage constructed, you can core the rest of your foundation.

For the courtyard gate, remove a 2-tile section of foundation...

...and add a fence. Any fence will do - the cheaper, the better. You won't see it in a second.

You need the fence to hold your courtyard gate. Go ahead and install one you like.

Your foundation should look like this now. You can add a staircase to the second floor if you like, but my sim wants an L-shaped staircase. Yes - he's spoiled rotten. Yours too? OK - here's what to do...

You'll have to remove some of the foundation...

...and build a shorter block two tiles away from the garage wall.

Test your stairs to be sure they'll hit the landing and then delete them. Demolish your landing, too, leaving a small strip.

You can replace the demolished foundation with walls now and build a temporary wall to enclose the area. Then go upstairs and build a construction box along the same grid lines, leaving an opening for the stairs. See it there, on the left?

Open your cheat window by holding CTRL and SHIFT, then typing C. Enter the cheat boolprop constrainfloorelevation false.

From your short foundation block, lay a couple of floor tiles. Your new wall should drop like this.

Install the stairs.

Now climb up to the roof of your construction box and, using the shovel, level it from one corner diagonally to the other side.

Open your cheat window and type boolprop constrainfloorelevation true.

You can demolish your construction box now - upstairs first.

Remove your short foundation block...

...build your landing foundation....

...and install your second flight of steps.

You can enclose your downstairs area now, leaving the courtyard open.

This remaining foundation looks odd, so let's replace it with a wall.

Much better. That should finish the downstairs for now. You can build your upstairs rooms and add a roof.

Here's my upstairs. I added railings to the steps and fenced off the stairwell. The glass block windows in the bathroom are from 4ESF and the others are from MTS2. So is the railing on the observation deck.

To build access from the house to your garage, remove a section or two of foundation from the adjoining wall...

...and replace it with wall sections. You can't put doors or windows on foundation either.

My spoiled sim can park his Hunka on the driveway. For now, I converted the garage into a weight room and bath.

I drew a stencil for the courtyard brick using flowerbed edging and filled it with a stone floor created by Lethe_s, probably from MTS2. Then I removed the edging and painted the courtyard with a mossy terrain paint from the same creator.

Maxis "Graveltar" flooring covers the roof, courtyard walls and driveway area. I used the invisible driveway from MTS2 as usual.

The price: $14,657

But my spoiled rotten sim wants to buy a flowerbed now. Yours too? geez... sims!

There - windowboxes and flowers from Bienchens-Sims2world.

What?! A shrub and a tree too? And a painting? Good grief! OK - you asked for it. Don't say I didn't warn you...

Another advantage of using foundation instead of walls is that you can contour the terrain around it. In this case, I raised the corner where the plane tree is planted so that the branches would clear the walls. The other plants are from Parsimonious, Wall Sims, Reflex Sims and 4ESF. The shield from Reflex Sims hides a burglar alarm because my sim is afraid that something will be stolen. I hung them both using the moveobjects on cheat.

Spoiled rotten sims also "need" a sculpture or two. From left to right, these plants are from Around The Sims, Parsimonious and Avenida Sims. The wall was created by Komosims.

I think I'll turn this downstairs room into the kitchen. I can squeeze a grill under the windowboxes in the courtyard.

Space is getting a little tight in this story, too. I think we have room for one more quick house...

Foundation is useful for containing ponds as well as terrain. This cottage is located in the older, quieter section of Mountainside Village, and is priced at $12,192.

You'll need your cloned foundation lot again. We'll start by demolishing everything but this little 4x2 block of wall-height foundation.

Level your lot and then build a short foundation around the perimeter of your property. As you approach the big block, the game will tell you when you've gone close enough.

Open the cheat window and type boolprop constrainfloorelevation false.

You can finish your foundation perimeter now. When you connect the shorter foundation to the block, the two tiles on the ends of the block will dip.

Turn off the cheat by typing boolprop constrainfloorelevation true.

Remove the four inside blocks of foundation so that you're left with a frame with a bump in it.

Now you can demolish the two normal blocks in the center of the bump...

...and replace them with walls on each side.

Lay a short gable roof on top...

...and remove the outside wall.

Add an arch and you've got a roofed entry to your property.

The foundation for my building is 9 tiles wide in the back by 7 deep, including the perimeter wall. Drag out a foundation for the house you want to build...

...add your walls...

...and a block or two for steps.

Cover your house with gabled rooves, starting with the longer section of the building. Do not use the Auto-Roof tool. It will cover your garden and probably mess up the roof over your entry.

The roof I'm using is from Aussie Topenders.

Add your windows and doors. You may also want to cut your rooms now. My cottage is laid out with a combined living & dining room and a separate kitchen. The bedroom and bathroom overlook the future pond.

You'll want to use an unpatterned paint around your entry because the wall is skewed. I used "Paste" everywhere but on the foundation of the house itself and inside the garden wall. The moss terrain paint is from Tribecca Sims and the path paint is from Simply Styling. The perimeter wall is topped with "Graveltar".

Bougainvillea from MTS2 matches the water lilies in the pond. Wall Sims made the bench, ATS gave me the vase, and I adopted the cat and birds at Mango Sims. A huge "Thank you!" to all the creators of custom content for making my game so much more playable... and to you, for reading this.

Happy building! ~ Polly