Welcome back to Room Reno #89 here at The Sims Resource! Today we’re helping a Sim who wants to live in a fabulous renovated pool house. Let’s meet the Sim we’re helping!
Meet Alicia!
Alicia is moving in with her cousins, the Bjergsens, in Windenburg. They have a fantastic house, a huge modern build on the shores of the water (though it’s probably too cold to swim in!). It’s a great place to live, but the Bjergsens want to give Alicia, a young adult, her own place to live on the property so she has some privacy even though she’s living with them. Their solution? A pool house! Much like the very fancy pool house from Gilmore Girls, in fact (does anyone remember the insane pool house makeover from season 6 of that show? It’s not not the inspo for this build ;)).
Alicia is happy with anything, but she’s expressed a love for a fairly minimalist look for the place when it’s done, sticking to warm neutrals as her preferred color palette for the furnishings and paint. The exterior is going to match the modern look of the rest of the property so it fits the vibes of the home. Let’s see what we’re working with!
The Before
This is a pretty good amount of space to build a pool house! While the rest of the house is on a foundation, I was thinking of building the pool house as a freestanding structure – it will still be on the foundation, but it won’t be connected like everything else. It’ll add to the privacy of the structure while not totally splitting it off from the rest of the house. The pool house is going to be studio style – just one big room, with a separate bathroom. It doesn’t need to be a lot bigger than that for Alicia, and there’s not enough space to make it much bigger than that, either.
Instead of a roof, I am going to use the overhanging patio from the master bedroom above to be the top of the pool house – I don’t know how possible this would be in real life, but that’s the power of build mode. There’s likely not going to be a formal living area in the pool house because of the limited space, but there are a few good furnishing tricks that can be used to make a lot out of a smaller space so that the pool house feels like a complete home all on its own, even though the main house is also just steps away. Whenever Alicia moves out, this pool house will be used for guests, so it needs to be simple and functional. Let’s get planning!
The Planning
Here’s the layout for the pool house! I built the shell pretty simply, it’s an L shaped layout to make it easier to divide the space between the bathroom and the rest of the area and to make it look a little more interesting from the outside (for those of you who know LilSimsie’s fancy box method, this is a fancy box). The bathroom is going on the bottom tail of the L, and I made sure it was at least nine tiles in size so that it had space for everything needed. Sometimes I’ve attempted to create six tile bathrooms, and there’s almost always an issue fitting in the shower or the sink.
Since this pool house has the luxury of extra space (it’s not a tiny home build), I could fit a whole stall shower bath combo into it without issue (and it was really nice after doing a lot of tiny home builds in my personal game). I plan to make an L shaped kitchen along the corner directly opposite the entryway, which I think will create a bit of an entryway area in the smaller space by setting the kitchen a few tiles back and allowing for there to be space for Alicia to kick off her shoes or change out of her cold weather or hot weather outfits. Plus, it leaves more potential space for storage, which is always my number one priority when designing spaces in real life and in the game. Let’s get building!
The After
I’m really happy with how this build turned out! I normally go for stuff that’s a little more elaborate when it comes to theme or aesthetic, but I really like this simple, minimalist look. Going forward I might have to do a few more simple, minimalist or neutral renovations to see how far this look can go. I’m usually a big fan of color, but I think the huge windows of this build really helped bring a ton of color in from the outdoors and the views of the ocean and pool, which sort of suits the more neutral styled interior to help the views shine to their fullest potential. I really liked the round kitchen island, which is something I don’t get to use in a lot of builds (my kitchens end up being galley shaped a lot of of the time). One quick note – if you want to use the rounded island pieces, you’ll have to alt place anything you want to sit right in the middle of the island because there’s no center counter piece for it to sit on. You can do that by moving all the counter pieces out of the way, use alt to place it where the center would be, and then use the nine key to raise it to counter height. New build skill: unlocked! I set the TV up on the dresser at the end of the bed to create a mini living area for the pool house as well.
Thanks for checking out Room Reno #89! If you liked this blog, check out Room Reno #88: Toddler Bedroom or our Gilmore Girls inspired lookbook. Looking for something else? Read about all the best Gossip Girl inspired CC or check out our Spring Break trends lookbook! Have a great day 😎
