I am unfortunately from Florida
which is especially unfortunate given the political state of this horrible place. It's a little embarrassing to even admit,
but you can't help where you were raised. But we do have some nice things
here like um, alligators, and extreme heat that makes you feel like
you're on the literal surface of the sun. Jokes aside, there is a reason
that I am telling you this. One of my favorite things to do in The Sims
is recreate real life houses in the game. And I do this all the time, I am
constantly looking for photos of houses that I might want to try and build. And you might have noticed that the
kind of houses that I like to build do not look anything like the stuff
that you might find here in Florida. I don't really know how to say this in a nice way,
but I kind of think that Florida houses are ugly. I'll show you a couple examples of what I mean, but a lot of our houses
here are usually one story. We really like beige, you'll see beige tile
everywhere, often times even in the bedrooms. They paint all of the walls beige both inside
and outside. The houses are often all garage, at least it looks like that from the front. And sometimes they'll do these
pool screens that look like a giant cage attached to the back of the house. This is kind of an example of what I'm
talking about and this one might even be a little bit nicer because it's got some
stone accents and it's not beige, it's gray. But you see what I mean by all garage. Here's
another one, this one's also trying to be a little bit fancy because we've got some different
trim at the base and it even has columns. Again, all garage. This one is like
really fancy because it has the tile roof, but this part here on the left, garage.
It also has these big arched windows that you'll see a lot and they like to do
this weird column thing where this whole area is just one story, it's going to have
like ridiculously tall ceilings in there. A lot of these fancier houses in
Florida were built in the early 2000s and they have unnaturally,
almost uncomfortably tall ceilings, and then weird stuff like these
wall niches just built in. And this one's nice because it's got
like a countertop and a light built in, but I just find this kind of strange. Here's another example of a house, kind of
same thing with the weird tall bit right here. This this one's also kind of simple,
more common, you might see it more often. And this one's actually like a bluish gray, but it has that same weird tall bit over
the front door and the house is all garage. And this is what I mean by pool screen. So I wasn't kidding when I say it looks like
a cage just attached to the back of the house. This is probably the most jarring thing
for people who aren't from Florida. Whenever I've talked about
this on my Twitch streams, I get some wacky comments because
people cannot comprehend this. A lot of people think that it's
glass, a lot of people think it's ugly and they're not wrong for that,
but this is a screen around the pool. And they build this for a couple of reasons: one,
it keeps out bugs and like critters and stuff, but it also helps keep your pool cleaner because
otherwise like leaves and stuff will blow into it. And that's annoying to have to clean so often
so people like to have these pool screens, it's actually kind of like a luxury
to have a pool screen like this. My parents house has a pool screen
like this, it's really, really common. If you like dig around on Zillow, you will
see these all over the place here in Florida. This is another example of kind of
what it looks like from the inside. A lot of times our houses will have these sort of
niches too with like a covered part of the patio. My house has this, but on my house the screen just goes across this wall instead
of across the whole thing. This is a little bit nicer than my house, but
this is kind of an example of a screened in porch where the roof covers it and then
there's just a screen across the wall. And it's actually really nice because
my cats can go outside on the patio, but it's safe for them because
it's completely screened in. This is another kind of up close example of what
the screens might look like and then this one is one as it's being built so you can see it's
like a big metal frame and then they take this mesh and they use it to cover the whole thing,
so it's not glass, it's just a mesh texture. So like wind, rain, all of that still
gets in, it's just a net almost. So you can kind of see what I mean when I say
that Florida houses are a little bit ugly, and I don't really have much interest in building that
in The Sims because it's just not really my vibe. And often times when I'll recreate
real houses in the game, I'll change things to make it look better or make
a little bit more sense in The Sims, but today I want to try to
build an accurate Florida house. I don't have a specific reference
photo, I'm kind of just doing it out of my brain because I have a lot of
experience in the field of Florida houses. Let's just say I know this style very well. But with that introduction out of the way,
I want to pop into the game now and show you a full Florida house speed build, and in true
Florida fashion, I am starting with the garage. There's a couple of important things to note
about this, obviously it's only one story. And you'll notice that it kind
of has an interesting front, but the entire back and sides are just
completely flat. You'll see that a lot in houses, especially new build houses
and not even like new-new build houses, but just houses that were built in
the last like twenty-something years. They really like to cheap out with
stuff like that which makes sense, you want to save money, but often times the back
will literally just be a complete flat wall. I mean your house in real life might look like
that. My house in real life looks like that, my parents house looks like that, so
that's what I was trying to go for here. And at first I wasn't fully committed
to the Florida house idea, I was just going to do like a regular little
screened in porch more like mine. And then I thought you know what, no, we're going to do a full screened
in patio, I want a pool screen. And so I really committed to the concept, I
used the screened in windows that come from the Greenhouse kit and then I put a glass roof
on top so obviously in real life it wouldn't be a glass roof, it would just be a screen,
but we can't really achieve that in The Sims. And then I tried to make a more organic pool
shape because a lot of the pools that I've seen in real life, they're not really rectangles,
they're more shaped like a bean or something. They have more rounded edges, they're
a little bit curvy. Obviously we can't do that in The Sims 4 because we
can't have any curves with pools, but that's kind of what I was going
for with these diagonal walls. Just imagine that it's smoother, okay.
I also put an alligator in the pool, just ignore that part, okay? Just ignore that
thing, it's not like dangerous in The Sims, it's just like a little VFX item
so when you're playing the game, it might like randomly appear, but it doesn't
affect anybody, nobody's going to get hurt by it. And that my friends is why we have pool screens
because you see that pond back behind this house? We're in Oasis Springs right now, in real
life there is an alligator in that pond. If there's a body of water in Florida, there
is an alligator in it, I'm telling you. And sometimes alligators come into
people's pools. I knew somebody, granted it was a baby alligator, but I
knew somebody in middle school who had a baby alligator show up in their pool and
they had to get someone to come move it. People also have snakes and stuff come in their
pool which is more common and kind of creepy. But anyway, on a more pleasant note we're
thinking about the floor plan of this house now, and I did a couple of things to try and mimic
a lot of real life Florida houses with this. It's really common to have like kind of big
wide open floor plans these days obviously, and it's also really common to have
the primary bedroom off by itself. Like in my parents house, their bedroom
is to the left of the front door and the kids bedrooms are all together
to the right of the front door. So it kind of has its own like
separate primary suite area going on. So I did that here, on the right side there's a
big primary suite with a walk-in closet and an en suite bathroom, and on the left side there's
two kids bedrooms and a regular hall bathroom. The rest of the house is just one big open
floor plan, kitchen, living, dining thing. I did something kind of weird
with the kitchen cabinets, and this was really channeling Florida as well. It might also just be channeling
like early 2000s, to be honest, but they really liked to do these sort of
like peninsula islands in these houses. And they're always on an angle, my parents kitchen is like this too.
They don't have a freestanding island, but they do have like a peninsula bar thing
and it's like angled towards the living room. And we can't really do this in The Sims, but a lot of times in real life, that part
where the bar seating will be is like taller. So there'll be like a regular height counter and then it like jumps up to bar height
counters where the barstools go. I think more commonly these days people
like to build completely flat countertops, but for a long time, the
bar height was more popular. I had a hard time trying to achieve that
in The Sims because it had like some weird angles and weird shaping to it so it wasn't
really working right, but I did what I could. I also put in a little half wall by the
front door which feels very Florida to me. My parents house has a little
half wall by the front door, my old townhouse had that, it's very common. I also put ceiling fans
everywhere in all of the bedrooms. I used that little arch thing from
the base game, it's just a wall item, but I used it there on the wall to
kind of look like a niche in the wall. And then I went through and took the Cottage
Living light because it has like those three lights hanging down from it and I attached
it to the ceiling fan because that looks like every ceiling fan I've ever seen in Florida, my
parents house, every room has something like that. I also put sliding doors everywhere so
the two bedrooms have sliding doors and I put like a double sliding door
in the living room because I felt like it looked kind of nice to have
the two spaces, like a wider one. In real life it'd probably be a wider
sliding door, but the ones from Eco Lifestyle were two wide so I just used
the base game one and put two of them. I realize that this whole thing is kind of niche, like most of you have never seen a Florida house
and you have no idea what I'm talking about, but there are some people who live
here, maybe their grandma lives here, maybe they went on vacation to Florida and
stayed in a house like this on their trip. Some of you are going to get
this and the rest of you are going to laugh at this and that's fine by me. I'm okay with that. As far as color
scheme goes, I was really going for beige. We've got that beige marble tile on the floor,
we got beige carpet, I put beige walls outside, there will be beige walls inside, we even have
like a brown-y, beige colored kitchen cabinet. On the outside I struggled
a lot with the roof texture. I ended up going for this kind of like brown
shingle vibe which I felt like kind of made sense. I thought about using one of the tile roofs,
but I've never lived in a house that has a fancy tile roof like that, I think of those tile
roofs as being really expensive and really fancy so I didn't want to use that, I wanted to
use like more of a plain normal shingle. And then with the landscaping, this
isn't so much like a Florida thing, more so it is just a real life landscaping thing, but landscaping that people do in real life
never looks anything like what we do in The Sims. So I always struggle with that,
I always struggle with trying to recreate real life plants, but in this
I think I was kind of on to something. So I tried to put a couple
of planters because I feel like you see that all the time
in real life, especially here. And so I made this like round planter box around a palm tree in the front yard and I could
totally see that happening in real life. I put like some gravel in it too because I was
kind of trying to make it seem like it had mulch. And then I did some pavers on the
patio, and now we're moving into the backyard for a second and I decided
to do a couple of fun things back here. I made the pool, I put the pavers
down, and then I started thinking about lights because we have these really
nice lights from the Little Campers kit, and so I was sizing them up and then trying
to place them all the way across the pool. It was kind of annoying to place them because
they kept jumping to the wrong height, I ended up having to move the pool just to do it. And also these are kind of
weird because they like, swing up, and it looks like they're
touching something, except in real life the pool screen is like arched so the
lights wouldn't be touching the top of it. Just ignore that part, okay, imagine it's
like one big string all the way across, okay? That's the best that we can do, I don't
know if that makes sense, but what I mean is they're not attached in multiple places
like that so it looks a little bit weird. Outside on the patio I put a couple
extra things like a bar and grill space, I put some lounge chairs,
we've got a little table. This is a really nice outdoor patio, I have never
had anything this fancy. The only thing about this that looks like my parents house is the fact
that it has like a little planter in the corner. If you can see in the back left corner of this,
there's like a little tiny palm tree back there. My parents have like a little bit that's got
some dirt and they have some plants in it. I won't lie, this actually seems like a really nice place to hang out. It is kind of
pretty and imagine if you had cats, they could come sit out here and it's all
screened in so it's all safe for them. It looks horrible from the outside,
but functionally having the screen is kind of nice, you got to
admit, it's kind of useful. There is a little tiny bit
of concrete outside of the screened in porch and I actually
didn't put anything on that. I was kind of thinking about my parents
house too and they have like a little tiny concrete slab outside of the door
that goes from the guest room area. I was thinking about my parents house and
they have like a little tiny concrete slab, in The Sims it would be like two tiles, that goes
outside of one of their back doors into the grass. And so they don't put anything on it so I didn't put anything on this concrete slab even
though in The Sims it's a bit bigger. But anyway, moving on to the
inside, we're actually starting to think about furniture and color
schemes and wallpapers and stuff. I'm going into the garage first, and
in here I put laundry in the garage. A lot of people in Florida in real
life have laundry inside their house, I think it kind of goes a couple of ways. Often times people have a closet
with a washer and dryer in it. Sometimes if it's a nice house, you've
got a full-on laundry room with like a -- it's basically a bigger closet
that has the washer and dryer in it, but also you might find the laundry
in like a carport or in the garage. I think it's kind of the equivalent of
people having laundry in their basements, but we don't have basements here
so people put it in the garage. So I did that in this garage, I put the
washer and dryer, I put a fridge out here, we've got like some storage and a
woodworking table, and some boxes. In this garage, we never had a
fridge in our garage growing up, but my neighbor did and her parents
used to keep those little ice pops, they're like basically a plastic tube
of juice and then you would freeze it. They would keep a ton of those little ice pops in
their garage freezer and I thought it was so cool. So when I put that in the garage, I
was like they've got ice pops in here. And this is kind of embarrassing to
admit, but you might notice that I'm using a fair bit of like the Greenhouse
kit and the Basement kit in this build, and um, that's because I actually
built this in April of 2023. It has been a full year since
I built this in real life. I just forgot that I had the footage, it's
been sitting on my computer the whole time. But this is like the long lost speed build. I looked on the gallery earlier and I
saw it was uploaded on April 23rd, 2023. I knew it was a while ago, I did
not realize it was that long ago, so I'm sorry about that, I did
not realize just how old it was. And if you go looking for this house, you
are going to have to scroll for a while. But it's okay, it's fine. We're going through
and furnishing more of the living space now and I'm adding in a couple of things, I put in like
a nice living room, it's got a nice beige sofa, it's got a nice recliner lounge chair
thing, we've got a round dining table. I was struggling a lot with the living space,
that was probably the hardest part for me was just trying to figure out where stuff should
go and how I should fit it all together. It's kind of a weird shape so I
was having a hard time with it. I don't think it's a bad shape though, I could totally see this happening in
real life, this space, this layout. A couple other funny things like this glass coffee
table. We had a glass coffee table when I was growing up and I'm sorry to put this on blast,
but my brother smashed the glass coffee table. He was probably like 5 years old,
maybe even younger than that. And he got a golf club because
he had like kid-size golf clubs. He brought it inside and he was swinging it in
the house and he smashed the glass coffee table. It was by accident, he didn't do it on purpose,
but he was swinging golf clubs in the house so I don't know what you expected, but after
that we no longer had a glass coffee table. In fact, for a while we had no coffee table, but when I put that one here in this
house, I was like yeah, that's perfect. The other thing that I was really sad about that
I wanted to do so badly was put the microwave above the stove because in every house I have
ever lived in, the microwave is above the oven and the microwave is kind of like the vent above
the oven, but you just can't do that in The Sims, the microwaves have to slot to a
counter and you can't raise them up. I was trying a couple things like sizing the
counter down and raising it up anyway, but it just just didn't fit right because it wasn't like
the same size as the cabinetry, and I think it wouldn't function anyway if it was raised up, but
that is one of my greatest wishes for The Sims 4. I would love to have a microwave that
builds in like that. Even if it was lower, like in the floor cabinets and it slotted into
a cabinet kind of like how the dishwashers do. Because you see that in fancy houses sometimes, they'll have a microwave
that's like lower like that. I just don't like having the microwave just sitting on the counter, I'm
not really a huge fan of it. Especially for like fancy houses, like
I'm sorry, the Landgraabs do not have a microwave just on their counter,
they absolutely have that built in, they probably have like a fancy appliance
cabinet so it looks hidden and you can't see it. But anyway, I'm decorating the bedrooms now,
you can see I'm working on this primary bedroom. I didn't love the furniture in here, I put a couple things like a TV across from
the bed, they have some fishing decor too, like they have a fishing rod above the bed
and like some lures in a cabinet on the side. It's all very beige and very plain. The
kids rooms are a little bit more exciting, one of them, the one that has the
sliding glass door in it, I tried to make this one into like a combination
guest room, work from home space. I think that a lot of people have been doing
that in real life these days where they have their desk in a room and then they also have
like a guest bed in there, kind of tucked away. So in this room I went for like
office, but also beach guest room so it had like kind of a plain bed, I
put this nice little beach wallpaper. I put this nice little beachy painting, but
they also have a desk and their laptop in there. And then moving into the other kids room,
this one is actually a kids room and this one I made for an infant, which you know,
is fun, but if you remember the context, I built this in April of 2023 so
the infant update had just come out. Infants were like the newest, coolest,
brand new addition to The Sims 4 which is funny looking back on it now
because it's been a whole year, but we were all extremely excited about
infants and putting stuff for them everywhere. This room kind of has like a frog theme. I used frog rugs and frog wall
decals and some green decor. I actually kind of like it, I should
do this sort of style more often. It's not a huge house in general so we're
just about done with the whole thing. And what I want to do now is pop back into the
game and give you a tour of the finished product. So I built this over here on this
30 x 20 lot in Oasis Springs, I liked how it had a lake behind it because
that kind of feels like Florida to me. We've got ponds and lakes
everywhere in this place, it's a swamp so there's water all over the place. And this is what the house
looks like from the front, as you can see the front yard is very simple. I did a couple of cute
things with the landscaping, like I have this tree surrounded by some flowers. Over here I've got like a bush
and some flowers in front of it. I'm not obsessed with this landscaping in The
Sims, I think I would probably add some more flowers and stuff to fill it up and make
it more lush, but I think that this is very realistic for real life landscaping
so I kept it a little bit more simple. I also put a couple of planters by the
garage so we have like some pretty lights and the planters surrounding
each side of the garage door. There is a fancy car in the driveway, obviously
a fake car, but a fancy car nonetheless. And then you can walk up to the front door from
here. When you first walk in the front door, we have a couple of things for storage. We've got
a little table to leave your keys and stuff on. We've got some shoes and a backpack
lined up by the front door, there's umbrellas because it's Florida
and you're going to need them. We've got like a mail rack. This is
that half wall I was telling you about, very realistic, we've got
those all over the place. And then if you come a little bit further
in, we have this nice big dining table. This is kind of what I was
talking about by wall niche, I was trying to pretend it was one. It's not
really one, but I wanted it to look like one. And then further back again,
we've got the living room. I put some built-ins around this TV, they've
got a nice coffee table with some storage. And then we have the kitchen which is
kind of small, but functional. It's got that interesting shape with the
peninsula, they've got some clutter. Over here to the left, this
is like the dogs section so they have the dog bowls and the leashes and stuff. I put the fire alarm really up high on
the wall and in like all of the rooms. In my personal experience
it's usually on the ceiling, but you can't do that in The Sims, but
that's fire code, so I put it everywhere. They've got a very small hall
bathroom with a shower/tub combo, they've got a counter with a
sink so there's some storage. I put a plunger in there because
I was trying to be realistic. And then we just have two bedrooms this
way, the first one is that little baby's bedroom so they have a changing table and
the crib and some toys and a bookshelf. And then we have that office,
guest room combo right here. I did that fun thing with the ceiling where I have
the ceiling fan and the light hanging from it. I was basically trying to make it look like
this because this is like the ceiling fan, you see these all over the place here. This is so what I'm used to. My childhood
bedroom had this, my entire parents house has this in every single room so that's
what I was trying to make this look like. All the way across the other side,
we've got this little hallway that leads you into the garage. I put the
thermostat right there next to it. And then in the garage we have all that
storage, we've got the fridge with the ice pops, we have the laundry, just some random boxes and
things in here, the trash cans in here as well. And then last but not least for the inside,
we've got the primary bedroom right here. I put carpet in all the bedrooms and then
they have like a sliding door to get outside. This room is quite simple, I also put -- and this is kind of controversial -- but I put
archways into the closet and bathrooms. And this happens all the time.
I don't know why they do this, but there isn't like a closed door into
the bathroom, there's just an open archway. And so I have that here. I think often times when that happens,
they might have like a separate room for the toilet and it would be closed
off, but this house doesn't have that. But they have a nice big
counter, shower/tub combo, a toilet back here, and they
also have a walk-in closet. I never put closets in my Sims builds, but
realistically these bedrooms would probably have a closet too, they're just kind of
small so I didn't try and fit one in. But I think for a room to be counted as a
bedroom in Florida, it has to have a closet, that's like a rule, but what do
I know? I just make Sims builds. So that's the whole interior, and then outside
we've got a few sliding doors to get out here. We have that huge pool, there's an alligator,
I put a little table, we've got some like pool cleaning supplies, couple more planter
boxes, there's a grill and like some lemonade. I put this fancy sun on the wall because
I thought that was kind of Florida vibes. We also have some lounge chairs, and then this, this is what I was talking about
looking like my parents house. My parents house has like
a little corner planter in their screen and there's some flowers
in it so I was channeling that too. Also important to note is that the pool and
the screen takes up like the entire backyard, there's basically no other yard.
That is very common in real life too. That happens all the time. But that, my
friends, is the fully finished Florida house. If you're looking for it on the gallery,
if the gallery wants to work, uh-oh, oh no. Maybe you shouldn't look for it
on the gallery. Oh, there we go. Okay, if you're looking for it, if you go
to my gallery page and you search Florida, this will be the easiest way
to find it because -- uh-oh. Maybe I'll re-upload it, how about
that? I built it in April of 2023 again, so it's re-uploaded so you can find it
easier now because it's there again. There we go. A full year later, double upload.
Hopefully you enjoyed this video though. This is a little bit different for me, I
don't normally try and do things that I think are ugly on purpose, but let me know if we
should do some other specific regional styles. I'm not as familiar with other ones, but
it might be kind of a fun series to try and build houses that look like they're
from different places around the world. And if this is your first time
learning about a pool screen, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I know
it's ugly, but they're everywhere. And with that, I'm going to catch you
all tomorrow, okay? Bye everybody. I know there are some people from Florida
who are going to think this is really fun. A lot of you are going to think it's weird,
but somebody out there is gonna like this. [ JAZZY OUTRO MUSIC ]
