The Gregory Legacy, Special: House Tour

Well, I've been threatening promising this for a while, so here it finally is: the tour of the Gregory family's oversized mansion. Since this isn't a regular chapter, our cover model for this installment is one of our dead cowplants, who has been planted in a very special location. I'll show that off at the end, though you may catch a small glimpse of it before then. ;) Anyway, we've got a lot of ground to cover (literally), so let's get started . . .

Here is the stately front of Gregory Manor one sleepy morning. Little has changed since the first time I showed off the landscaping, although I did have to redo some of the ivy that got deleted when I rearranged the top floor. If you didn't notice the rocket and observatory peeking out, you might think this was a pretty normal (if ostentatious) house. Little would you know . . .

. . . that it is the house of a legacy family who are overindulged by their obsessive-pack-buying controller. The grounds show that this is no ordinary house. We'll get a closer look at a few areas of interest in the backyard at the end, but you can see the mausoleum, playground, and various other areas here in this shot.

This is what the upstairs used to look like before the remodel (and back when we had two rockets). Boring and impractical! The only way to get to the nursery is through the master bedroom, the kids' bedrooms are as uninspired as they come, the stairs lead to an empty room and a space that was meant to house the observatory but turned out to be too small so it's just useless now, and the playroom is kind of cramped. So I redid the top floor!

This picture is a different orientation from the other, but here is the current top floor. Much better, in my opinion. I also took out the empty room on the third floor and repurposed the space up there, so there was no need for stairs anymore. Now, starting at the room on the top with the yellow chairs and moving clockwise, here is the layout: child bedroom (currently Ava's), child bedroom (currently Isaac's), heir/ess or twin bedroom (currently Celeste's), teeny closet, kids' bathroom, nursery, hall/conversation area, another smaller hall, gigantic redone playroom, master bedroom, and master bath. I like it a lot better now.

The main floor is largely unchanged, though I did finish decorating it, with the exception of that middle room. That's where Kori hosts most of her parties and it gets temporarily decorated in whatever style she needs, so maybe when I'm all done with parties I'll figure out something to do with it. For now, it just holds the staircases and connects the other parts of the house. So, again, starting at the top and moving clockwise, we have the inspiration room, the focus room, the open-plan kitchen and dining, a bathroom, the entry, that stair room, the living room, a focus-moodlet-granting porch (for the yoga mat mostly), another bathroom, and a back hall.

The basement is underutilized, I'll admit. The big blue room was meant to be a party room before I realized it's almost impossible to corral partying sims unless you just built a room with fridges and video games. Right now it holds a few career rewards that are too cool to delete but don't fit anywhere, a large bar, and lots and lots of light fixtures. There are two hallways in the middle. The other rooms, starting at the top and moving clockwise, are a photography suite, a storage/collections room, a bathroom that still isn't decorated, the elder bedroom, and the gym.

Now that you've got a general sense of the layout of the house, we'll look at some of the rooms from each level. For the basement, we'll skip the undecorated rooms since there's not much to see there.

The gym is one of my favorite rooms in the whole house. It's so cheery and very functional! The entrance to the gym holds various decorations, a locker, a bench, and some career rewards that grant an energizing moodlet. The two doors are to prevent traffic jams, but the end result is that sims going to the elder bedroom usually 'shortcut' through the gym rather than walking through the (to me, more logical) route of the arches outside the gym. Oh well.

The other side of the gym contains the actual equipment. Aaron and Andres have spent many an hour down here.

The elder bedroom is currently done in Laurel and Kori's signature style. There's a VIP bucket to grant a flirty moodlet, which has interesting effects on the ghosts returning to what they still seem to think is "their" bed.

The other corner of the elder bedroom. Not much to report here.

Finally for the basement, just a peek into the collections room. We have complete egg and geode collections, and a nearly-complete perfect plant collection, plus a varied assortment of other goodies. If I just deleted this stuff, the bills would probably be a good bit lower, but I like them having it around. I don't know why. Just in case. In case of what? I don't know.

On the main floor, we'll start in the focus room. There is space for the kids to do their homework, although they often try to head to the dining table anyway. Faye produced the plant cell print at work. There's also a little corner for chess, and Faye's equipment for woodworking and serum-producing. You'll also notice we have several aliens because they seemed like good decorations for this room.

In the corner is Kori's Desk of Evil, as well as the kids' science set. I stuck a fire alarm there so if they ever do start a fire, I'll be aware of it quickly, but all of my whiz kids have been oddly fire-safety-conscious so far.

Here's a view of the kitchen/dining area. It also, unfortunately, functions as somewhat of a hall between the entrance and the rest of the house, but I'm happy with the design so I'm not going to change it.

This is the actual kitchen part of it. It's pretty simple. The empty plate is not décor; my sims are just lazy and don't clean up after themselves even when they know we have a house photoshoot coming up.

There is likewise not much to the dining area, but I tried to spruce it up a little. Behind the camera here is a relatively-new backdoor that leads to the repositioned garden.

This is one of the first floor's bathrooms, done in the style of "cramped, overcrowded, blue and white bathroom." That style is a particular favorite of mine. If they gave me more room-specific clutter, every room might look like this, so let's be thankful that they didn't. This bathroom is right near the front door, so anyone that needs a quick tune-up before heading to work or school or anyone that comes home with critical needs can get to it quickly.

The entryway is kind of dichotomous. If you look at this end of it, it looks downright respectable, with maybe the exception of the kitty painting. That's where we skill charisma, though, so I just stuck a random confident painting there to help. Otherwise, the décor and the extra knight seem to speak well of this affluent family.

Then you turn around and all hell breaks loose. This end of the entryway is pure, undiluted crazy. I love my giant space rock sentries and the couples' photos, so I just went wild and did the curtains in random colors. It amuses me. This is probably the most honest first impression for visitors coming to the house. The three paintings on the right are mood paintings produced by Dorian with their auras turned off.

Here's the living room with bonus ghost Nathan. I eventually caved and got a second gaming mat (which Faye upgraded completely) because guests and ghosts were always using the first one.

In the corner of the living room is the reading nook, which as we saw in an earlier chapter, is also a great gathering space for party conversations and cake. The only unfortunate thing is that I've had several squeamish sims who severely disliked the aquarium, which I am unwilling to part with, but now everyone gets an uncomfortable moodlet from something dirty in this room. I've looked around but I can't find any source for it except possibly the aquarium. I don't know if that's a bug or we just need new fish or what. Perhaps there's a dirty plate stuck somewhere inaccessible since people tend to like to eat in here sometimes, but I haven't been able to find one.

Another crowded bathroom in the back corner of the first floor. I hate dealing with the embarrassed moodlet so they have five total bathrooms.

The back hallway is notable because this bench is apparently a very desirable spot for conversation and eating, so several pictures have taken place in this space. Why is it so desirable? Your guess is as good as mine. It kind of looks uncomfortable, actually.

The other side of the room is also worth mentioning because of the dartboard. This is the single item in the house that generates the most whims. Everyone always wants to play darts, practice darts, win three games of darts, etc. It's kind of ridiculous actually. I might delete it someday. They're just kind of obsessed with it, although they don't tend to actually play it on autonomy. Huh.

The inspiration room wound up somewhat sparse compared to some of the other rooms, but it gets the job done. There's room for painting, instruments, writing, and children's drawing and violin.

In fact, we have a lot of instruments - three guitars (one of which is Grim's really dumb guitar), an adult violin, a kid violin, and the piano that Laurel earned from the music career. I later realized that last curtain doesn't match and fixed it, by the way, but I forgot to go back and take another picture.

The final stop on the main floor is the side porch off of the living room, which the game technically considers a room. There is plenty of seating out here and sims sometimes come out here for meals, conversation, or clay time. This is also the designated 'wellness' room, with the yoga mat and meditation stool, as well as several out-of-place focusing décor items to help that skill along. I also have some wind chimes out here, and the sims seem to find them just as pleasing as I do.

Finally moving upstairs, here is the kids' bathroom. It is appropriately messy (with laundry outside of the bin, for example) and a little more colorful than some of the other bathrooms, while still essentially being blue and white.

Next door is the nursery. I managed to crawl right up into the corner with the camera so we only needed one picture of this one. The only stuff you're missing are some decorations on the walls you can't see. It's a very big room for a small object that can't be moved around by the sims, but I was going for a touch of realism so I can pretend there's more to the baby stage.

Out in the hall we have another of my favorite areas. This is a little conversation and/or contemplation area, where they can chat or just watch the fish. Needless to say, it rarely gets used, but I like the way it came out.

The other side of the main upstairs hall has another game table for the kiddies and plenty of decorations.

Then there's the small hall, which opens into the playroom, master bedroom, and master bath. I divided it off just because it looked better like that with how the stairs came up, and it made a nice little space for a quiet game of chess.

The playroom is wild because I "let" the kids decorate. ;) They decided to use all of the Voidcritter decals on the wall, apparently pretty excited about that pack. The playroom has a lot of other amenities, but this side of the room is pretty dominated by Voidcritter imagery and the battle station.

They also have a puppet theater I have yet to use, the perpetually-smashed dollhouse (this time it was Ava), a nice TV and a reading nook, as well as plenty of toys.

Next door, we have the bizarre bedroom of Faye and Andres. They have a very particular style. As you can probably guess from the foreground in the bottom left, this room also exudes a flirty aura.

Yes, nothing says "unique" quite like lots and lots of floral pink and also lots of dead fish. It's quite the combination, but it does tell you a lot about this couple.

The master bath ended up a really weird shape because when I tried to square it out, the game wasn't recognizing some closed-off rooms as rooms, so I just left it weird. It's kind of grown on me, though. I like it. It's another super-cluttery bathroom, but you should probably be used to seeing that by now.

Now on to the kids' rooms. Ava's colors are black and yellow, but I pulled in some grey and orange as well. The kids' bedrooms have always had these great little nooks for the beds, and I gave them contrasting colors to the rest of the room to help them stand out.

Much like a black and yellow caterpillar, snake, or fish, Ava's room primarily says "You probably shouldn't get too close to me - I might be dangerous!" She's also got that Rambunctious Scamp athletic streak, so she's got some sports memorabilia in here too.

Isaac's colors are red and blue, and his room reflects his brainy, lovably dorky personality.

He got a bigger bookcase than the other two because I figured a Whiz Kid would want more books. His room is definitely knowledge- and science-oriented, but there's a sweetness to it too, like in his plain teddy bear or the pictures strung up on the wall.

Celeste's colors are green and yellow, and her room is wild! As the heiress, she got the biggest room, and I went all out decorating and furnishing it. I love those butterfly wall sculptures that came with Kids' Room Stuff. They're easily my favorite decorative item at the moment, but I restrained myself to only putting them in here and the playroom.

Celeste's style reflects her quirkiness and cheery, breezy attitude. She's got some very eclectic toys and decorations.

Here's the final corner of her room. It's kind of amazing how easy it was to find lots of green things. Of the three kids' rooms, I'm happiest with this one.

Now for the outside. This is the main part of the backyard. Swimming pool, hot tub, seating aplenty, a slide, a grill, a bar, and that impressive ice sculpture. The kids' playground is also right here. This would also be a great area for parties if I could get the sims to all go to the same place at once. 

On the other side of the house, we have the garden. Only its location changed. It's still enormous and a lot of work, but it brings in more money than the adults, so it stays.

Finally, here's a peek at where those cowplants ended up: right on the roof where the unusable space used to be. They make pretty awesome gargoyles, huh?

That concludes our tour! I hope you enjoyed it. It's taken forever to get the house to this state, but I'm very happy with it. Thanks for reading, and be sure to check back soon for more updates, this time featuring Celeste in the title picture! Check in with me at SiMania or Boolprop. Bye!