A few days ago, I posted about moving home to a new sim. At the time I mentioned that the house wasn’t *precisely* what I wanted. So guess what?
I’ve changed it. In fact, I possibly change house more times than Imelda Marcos ever changed shoes…
Anyway, the new place is much more along the lines I was trying to achieve the first time around, although it has moved very much away from the “inviting nature in” theme that Ari has managed so expertly with her home, and of which mine was but a pale imitation. Instead, I’ve gone more down the Geoffrey Bowa avenue, combining it with a bit of a Mediterranean feel.
The new house is more traditional in that it has things like “walls” and “windows”, rather than being open to nature on three sides. It also has a more traditional “upstairs” and “downstairs”. Like the first build at the new home, it is still built back into a wooded hill, but I’ve moved it further forward so that it embraces the infinity pool.
I’ve also kept to something of “earthy” tones – apart from the white exterior stucco finish – with wood panel on the back lounge wall and on the bedroom ceiling, together with a Japanese wood screen effect on the bedroom walls, carried over from the first build, and muted natural colours to interior walls, ceilings and flooring – with the exception of the Mediterranean tiling evidenced around the pool.
The lounge, slightly smaller than in the first build, does retain a frontage that is open to the world, with a tiled front patio area linking it directly with the infinity pool, which has now been extended back to almost join with the house – indeed, on climbing out of the pool you are practically *in* the lounge area – an idea I first came across in some of Geoffrey Bowa’s hotel designs in Sri Lanka.
The main reason for doing this is so that the full effect of the infinity pool can be enjoyed from the lounge itself – as I hope the picture to the right demonstrates. I hope also that, by drawing the pool “into” the house more, it will be something I can friends actually make use of, rather than it remaining purely decorative – as so many pools in SL seem to.
While the living room is slightly smaller than previously (15×15 compared to 16×16), the house is actually some 8 metres wider than the original build. This has allowed me to both move the stair case out of the lounge and provide space for a separate area where my laptop and “desk” can sit (the laptop cunningly disguising a few things).
The added width to the house means the bedroom is now much larger and lighter, and now benefits from covered balcony overlooking the front aspect of the infinity pool and the open sea beyond. Full length windows separate the bedroom from the balcony, with access between the two via a side arch. Additionally, the bedroom has a set of sliding doors leading to the “back garden” – a lawned area on top of the hill the house backs into. How much this will be used, I’ve no idea – but I think it adds a little something to the place overall, and it’ll probably end up getting a couple of trees and flowerbeds and probably a retaining wall.
The revised house has other advantages over my first attempt: for a start, it is much lower than the original, allowing it to “blend” more easily with the landscape and trees – despite the white stucco. It also means that Kelly gets a much improved outlook from her house, which is more-or-less the same in overall style, just without the infinity pool. 
Some re-working of the land was obviously necessary in order to “fit” the new design, but even this proved beneficial, as it has allowed me to better sculpt the hills and slopes and make things a lot more gentle and smooth overall. I’ve also been able to revise and improve the footpath linking the two houses. While this wasn’t vital, there were a couple of niggles I had with it which didn’t lend themselves to easy fixes given the style of the earlier houses. Away from this, one thing that hasn’t gone is the dance area … and I hope that will also be seeing a lot of use in the near future.
Overall, it is fair to say I’m finally pleased with the revised layout – the house “works”, the landscape is subdued and everything (to me at least) has come together quite neatly. I’m particularly happy that despite the drastic changes to the house build itself, I actually managed to get the new place done using just 2 prims over the first attempt; the new house design weighs-in at 84 prims, the “old” was 82.
Now, if I’ll just stop moving around long enough to actually enjoy it!
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 