Hood planning

I had a look at the website and I do not think that there is a possibility to see the different types of areas there.
I assume that you would have to look up that kind of information for each municipality separately. For the ones at which I had a look, there was no full map available. I had to look up the protocols of the building committee and if new areas were assigned, there was a picture of the planned layout in that one protocol when this topic was discussd. Thus, the information should be spread between many different protocols, many of them from decades ago with lots of not yet digitalized information.
There also is the Grundbuch, a public register for all lots in Germany that is fully digitalized, but to obtain an excerpt of that register, you have to have a legitimate interest and it costs 10 euros per excerpt (containing the information about a single lot).

If you do not plan to recreate the Sims 4 lots, that quarter will appear more authentic. If you just plan to have residential lots there, Crumbling Isle might have been a village that was incorporated into Windenburg at some point in time. Then all buildings would be older and might have a bit different styles. It also could have been an estate with a manor and servants' houses. Former subsidiary buildings like stables and barns might have been converted into expensive houses and apartments. In that case, most or all the buildings would be from a similar period in time, just with different price ranges. The converted buildings would be quite modern inside. Loft style is rather popular for this kind of converted buildings, but of course, it is not the only possible style. For the manor and the servants' buildings, you could decide on whether they are renovated and modern inside. The manor and the converted subsidiary buildings would be in the center and the servants's houses would be more remote. As the servants' houses were of lower quality than the main buildings, you also could decide that they decayed faster and that for this reason fewer or no ones are remaining.


Build/buy

You could build houses for EA. They also tend to forget the railing quite often.
While sims cannot fall and injure themselves, German building legislation still requires railings for all stairs that have more than three steps. If you want more information, you may look up DIN 18065. The regulations of this norm may be complemented by additional regulations in each municipality.

Picture 1: For that form, the most common material is plastic and such waste bins usually just have one plain color. Neutral colors are more common, but any color is possible. A metal mesh (like this https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p...a-7DgNOYvPNrzAz) also would be possible, if it is possible to have transparent parts in the texture. There also were a few ones with wooden colors, but those wooden colors were light ones and the wood grain was barely visible. The waste bin in the picture due to its texture looks like a wood fiber plant pot somehow imho.

Picture 3: I would remove item 4. I also would remove the rug unless you have an object that fits beneath to explain the slope on the left side. Wrinkles are fine, but the sloped part looks like it ignores fundamental physical laws.
Rug 14 has a pattern that has been common for a really long time. Those type of rugs usually were rather small and available for a relatively low price in furniture shops. The pattern of rug 6 looks more like a blanket pattern to me. I am absolutely not able to tell you which rug patterns were relevant in which part of the 00s. Rug 13 looks stripy enough to get a similar judgement as rug 14, although it would have been less common than rug 14 due to size, colors and the flowers between the stripes.
My general experience: More expensive/expensive-looking furniture often was combined with Persian/Persian-looking rugs (dark wood mostly combined with dark and red rug colors, light wood mostly combined with light and blue or cream rug colors), mainly owned by older and middle-aged people. IKEA rugs mainly were combined with IKEA furniture and were mainly owned by younger and middle-aged people, usually people who had moved out and established their own household. The striped rugs often were used in situations when you needed a robust rug, like on a balcony, as a blanket for pets, in children's bedrooms next to their beds etc. Some people also had a big rug in a plain color in their living room for couches, armchairs and coffee table that covered most of the floor.

Picture 4: As item 9 does not really look like a book, I woul remove it.


Windenburg builds

BaWü Fachwerk apartment
Do you have a link with the pictures for me once more? I had a look at the last couple of postings, but I could not find it.
Regarding the households I had suggested: Is any of these households living on government assistance? If yes, the apartment should not be bigger than suggested because in that case there are limits for the maximum allowed apartment size and if the apartment is too big, people will have to move to a smaller apartment. In cases, where it is not possible to find a smaller apartment, authorities have the right (and sometimes really do this) to lock rooms of the too big apartment so that the tenants just may use the amount of space that is considered appropriate for their household size.


New builds

Kirchstraße FWH
Shop ideas: Wrist watches often also are sold in jewellery shops. As the shop is rather small, that would be a good choice imho. Alternatively, clocks also could be sold with furniture or electronics or maybe even robots.
Stairs: You could use regular modular stairs instead. Six tiles is enough space for that and you could place the second set of stairs directly on top of the first set, if you use modular ones.
Apartment size: I am quite sure that the attic room does not count as "Wohnfläche" (living space) for calculating the rent when the room can only be accessed via Luke and ladder. Therefore, there would be no incentive for the landlord to include the attic room into a rental contract. If you want to include the room into the apartment, you should add stairs. (If regular non-modular stairs are stockable, that might be an option to access the attic.)
Household: In RL, rental apartments of such a size are not that common. More apartments of that size are owned apartments. Unfortunately, owned apartments are not possible ingame. If you exclude the attic, the apartment might be an option for a family with three children. Both parents would have to have jobs to be able to afford the rent although they do not necessarily have to be academics. Including the attic, I think that the apartment would be too expensive for a nuclear family. Maybe it could be suited for a three-generational family (although those more often live in owned houses in rural areas) or as a shared apartment for some younger or middle-aged friends. If you want to add a special household to the neighborhood, the apartment also could be used for supervised living for teenagers who had been removed from their families due to neglect (or other problems) or adults with mental handicaps.
Wall column: On the ground floor and in the attic, there is a wall column, but there is no corresponding column in the other two floors. The column most likely contains the chimney. Therefore, it should be on all floors.
Reference pictures: This attic definitely is not living space. I would not include it in the apartment. A decorative Luke without real access should be sufficient.

Bonn apartment
Felege family: What are the apartment sizes? As the family despends on state support, the size limits depending on the number of household members are relatively strict. The style of the house is fitting for a household that moved to the village/town relatively recently.
Waste bin(s): As I am not sure whether you used the plural because of the different types of bins or because you think that each household has its own set of bins: In apartment buildings, waste bins are shared and people try to keep the number of waste bins (at least the black ones) as low as possible so that they do not have to pay unneccessary money to the waste collection company. For four households, one black bin might work (unless diaper-aged children are living there). There also should be just one blue bin. There might be one or two yellow bins. I am not sure whether the apartment building should have a brown bin (organic waste) at all. The more people share a bin, the more likely one of them throws stuff into the bin which may not be disposed there. Most municipalities check the content of the bins every now and then and if they discover wrong stuff in the bin, the household receives a warning first and after a few incidents, they lose the right to have a brown bin (which usually does not cost money) and have to use the black bin (that costs money) instead. If the one black bin already is relatively full whenever it is collected, they might need a second black bin and therefore have to pay the double amount for the waste collection. (Sorry for the side note.) Back to the original question: If there is no connection from the back to the front of the house, the bins have to be placed in front of the house. Otherwise the tenants of the upper floors could not reach it and it would be disgusting for the tenants of the ground floor to move the bins through their apartments. The bins, of course, have to be placed on the lot itself and not on the sidewalk (except for the day when the waste is collected).
Front view reference & map: The walls of the house are not exactly parallel to the street. Therefore, on the left side of the house (in the front view picture), there is a small strip of land in front of the house (beneath the balcony) that belongs to the lot. I assume that the waste bins always are placed where they are placed in this picture. Ingame, you will always have at least one tile between sidewalk and the outer wall. That tile is where I would place the bins. (And as you can see in the picture preferably not directly beneath the window.)
Original layouts: The two ground floor apartments are too small for the Felege family and the two apartments on the upper floors should be too big.

Multi-gen FWH Markstraße
Behr household: I am sorry, but I am not able to remember all your households and it is quite time-consuming to go through all the links from the last couple of postings to find the right information. It would be great, if you could give me a short summary of the family (number of sims, ages, income and special attributes like pets).
Side view: Can you replace the windows with smaller ones?
Hauswirtschaftszimmer: Usually, it is just a laundry room. Housekeeping area seems to be a common translation.
Jewellery shop: If you know the company name, you could look it up in the Handelsregister (commercial register). If you use the official website, this information is available for free.
Rear view: Maybe a ladder as connection between the two balconies would work better than the spiral stairs?
Front & back door: I am sure that this could be changed if the owners want to. I guess the current owners just got so used to using the back door while there still was a shop in the front area that they did not change their habits after the shop closed.
Lot price: 175k is extremely cheap for a house with 325 m² living space. I searched for houses in my home region with a 100 km radius and the biggest house that I could find was a FWH with about 200 m² in a town of 4000 inhabitants. For more modern houses, about 160 m² was the maximum. Therefore, your reference house most likely needs a lot of money and renovations to provide an acceptable quality of living. Ingame, however, this low quality of living cannot really be realized. Therefore, the owners should be rather wealthy. If you think that the current owners did all the renovations, they should have a high income. If you think that the parents of the current owners already made bigger investments, a slightly above average income might be enough.

WHG Am Markt
Ground floor layout: Can you connect the room with the back entrance and the room with the stairs? It does not really make sense to have two walls and doors to reach the stairs. And as you already know, spiral stairs are not really an option for apartment buildings as they do not qualify as fire escape.
Shop layout: The whole front of the building should accessible to the customers. That way more products can be displayed in the windows and daylight is also nice to have. Maybe turn the right part of the building into a storage room, but make it smaller (so that the front of the room is added to the main shop room). If the shop is really successful, they might need additional storage room, but that additional storage also could be somewhere else where the rents are cheaper.
Business idea: I think guitars (or musical instruments in general) without the other stuff would be more than sufficient for that small shop. You might want to look up "Musikhaus Thomann". That is a German music shop located in a small village of about 200 inhabitants that apparently is has the highest sales numbers for a music shop worldwide (including their online business, of course).
OG: Please also replace the ladder with regular stairs - no matter what kind of changes you have to do to the layout, it will be worth it.
Household: As the apartment has two bedrooms and two more rooms that could be converted to additional bedrooms, it would be suited for a family. As it is rather small, it would be affordable for a family with a lower income. How many family members does the Felege family have? The size would be considered as suitable for five or more household members in RLP.


Culture

In my last posting, I just tried to list certain trends because it is difficult to pick a certain sim and say that this sim would have racist opinions. This does not mean that there racism, stereotypes and prejudices only exist in certain places. They exist everywhere, they just are more or less common. As an example: Far-right party AfD currently has 29-31 % in polls in Thüringen (where there will be elections on municipal level soon). In Germany as a whole, they have 16-19 % in polls (which still is far too much imho).
I do not use instagram, but if you can forward the text/images to me, I could translate a few of them for you.
The Youtuber that I mentioned is @ryanwass. I only have watched one video from him because it was linked somehwere and had a look at the titles of several other videos. Content about Bavaria definitely seems to be overrepresented, but matches American stereotypes about Germany. Nevertheless, there also are videos where he reacts to videos about working conditions, the university system, German fraternities, differences between German and American houses etc. that could contain new information for you.


Fashion

That definitely is possible. I guess that it also might be related to the different number of inhabitants of our countries. Germany with more than 80 million people is a bigger market for local film and TV productions, local music etc. Of course, we also are strongly influenced by the U.S., but maybe a bit less than other countries. I also assume that there are differences within Germany. In cities, people pick up trends quicker than in rural areas.
Brands: I think that this also depended a lot on the environment. In Gymnasium, it played a smaller role than in Hauptschule. And in a very rural area like my home area, where the Gymnasium pupils had very mixed backgrounds (from children of company owners to children of unemployed parents) it probably mattered even less.
Discount stores also were not yet that common. Kik was founded in 1994, but it took them many years before they opened a shop in my hometown. Therefore, you would have to own a car and be able afford fuel for a one hour drive to be able to go to a discount clothing shop.
Discount supermarkets like Aldi every now and then had some clothes as special offers, but without visible brands on them and you would not buy whole outfits there. There were shops with affordable clothes like C&A (although you also could get ball gowns for several hundred euros there) where you could get cheap basics and then mix them with more special items from other shops. There also were some regional chain stores that were quite popular and affordable.
Really poor people would rather go to a second-hand shop in our municipality instead of buying new stuff. I do not have any experience with that, but it would make sense if you can buy the same brands there, just from previous collections/years.
Extremely sandblasted jeans are nothing that I would necessarily associate with a cheap price. Basic items from cheap stores often were less remarkable than similar items from more popular stores. Therefore, people with that cheap clothing would not necessarily stick out and draw attention to their clothing. Therefore, I would assume that some of the "approved brands" started the trend first and the cheap stores only joined in later. Of course, there also was cheap fast fashion with low quality available in cheap stores, but you could avoid that stuff easily.

If you want to call it like that @Obelix look. Usually, these men wear cloth trousers and buttoned shirts, often with suspenders.

Middle-aged and elder women: For a middle-aged women, I would choose a simple, not fashionable pair of jeans, for the elder women rather cloth trousers. Depending on the season, they both could wear a wide cut t-shirt or pullover with plain color or unfashionable pattern. For elder women, I also recommend a Kittelschürze with skin colored tights and a t-shirt or pullover beneath: https://static.bnn.de/nachrichten/d...0056693758h.jpg This kind of clothing was considered fashionable for a short period of time when they were young and some women continued wearing Kittelschürzen for the rest of their lives.
If the temperature is a bit cooler, they also could wear an old, clunky cardigan on top pf t-shirt/pullover.
Shoes like these (also as sandal version with heel strap) also were quite common and often used inside the house, in the garden, but also for trips to the nearby town. https://schuherlebnis.de/media/imag..._200x200@2x.jpg
For other types of shoes, you also can look up pictures of nuns (search terms e.g. Nonne Schuhe). In RL, I have also seen some nuns with outerwear that might be what you are looking for, but unfortunately, it seems more or less impossible to find pictures online because there are so many pictures of nun costumes.
I am sorry that I did not include more links. So many fashion shops have pictures of all their products online so that it is difficult to find unfashionable examples for pretty much all search terms.

My Germany trip!!! :D
So last month, my partner and I finally have visited the hamlet of interest in the Bergisches Land for my Veronaville inspiration because it isn't too far driving from Cologne, where my SO and I stayed for a party, and we got lucky with that rare moment of really warm weather last April! Aside of visiting those villages for my TS2 build research, we really enjoyed hiking in its tranquil forests and walking through the cozy and quiet non-touristic villages . My partner also liked those cutesy half-timbered houses (FWH). Indeed, that specific hamlet I had on the radar for a long time has the vibes of German Veronaville irl regarding the "Bauweise" and the population size (~500 inhabitants), except that it doesn't have a wide creek (it's located higher up in the hills). Most of the (monumental) FWH in that hamlet are detached civil houses with big yards and most of them are built between 18th to early 20th century, though I've also seen a post-war FWH at the main street of a 3k village further down at the river. I kept the details in mind you posted in reply no.11 ( https://modthesims.info/showthread....738#post5737738 ), where you mentioned that (spaciously) detached FWH are exceptional, but I think that the open building style was more common in certain areas of the Bergisches Land. After asking around about the architectural history in the local FB groups, I understood that the hamlets in the area we visited used to be very small settlements with enough space to build detached civil houses (Bürgerhäuser), and the reason for those big yards was to farm their own vegetation and small livestock, as the inhabitants had other occupations than agriculture, such as working in metal factories or as an artisan (metal mining/industry was only replaced by agriculture from early 20th century). So I observed that most of the FWH over there are not built as U-shaped or rectangular-shaped Bauernhäuser. And some of those civil FWH have bigger front yards than 3 tiles wide. Instead, the farms were built as Einzelhöfer outside of the villages (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einzelsiedlung ). However, even the 3k village/small town at the river, built as a Straßedorf with a church, also has a fair amount of detached civil FWH, especially at the outskirts. The longest attached build is 5 houses in a row in the center, while most of the other attached builds are duplexes and a few triplexes. Farming was not convenient in that valley because the hills are steep and swampy, hence the lack of Bauernhöfer there as well. I also noticed that some the FWH have fancy extensions, such as garages and balconies. I guess such kinds of extensions are possible there as its plots are spacious enough, although I wonder whether or not they were listed as monuments.
The builds I also observed in the hamlets I visited higher up in the hills, are a couple of MFH apartments and a few old Fachwerk duplex houses. The higher amount of MFHs in such a hamlet is because it was formerly a settlement for factory workers. But I assume that old big houses in villages, such as large Bürgerhäuser and pension houses, can also be converted into MFH. But in more rural and agricultural-oriented villages, I can imagine that bigger MFH are less common. Another inspiration I got during my hike is converting the silo into a lookout tower on the hills because we visited such a monument and we saw a few empty bottles of booze inside .
While you mentioned that many Germans cover their windows with sheer curtains, I was surprised that a fair amount of inhabitants do not cover their windows in the Veronaville-ish hamlet. But it must be noted that the windows in German houses are smaller than those in Dutch houses. You also mentioned that Jägerzäune are not common, but I observed they are fairly common in the villages I visited. Could be a regional thing, though (NRW vs RLP or Hessen).
So I conclude that the villages in the Bergisches Land with its Bergisches Häuser are the best references for my German twist on the Veronaville Lots . And apparently, the Bergs also have their own word for a hamlet/Weiler: http://www.wilmanns.com/wippe/hofschaftsdef.htm (+ topographical image: http://www.wilmanns.com/solingen/solingenrelief.jpg ). I am aware, though, that the smaller villages in NRW may be less rural than those in RLP and Hessen.
My partner and I definitely want to visit the nature of NRW again because we both enjoy hiking in quiet hilly forests with rivers/creeks and walking through villages with cute half-timbered houses! Also, it is not too far driving for me (3+ hours) and I found out I got a nice rush from driving on the Autobahn (yes, I'm aware of the laws around the advised 130 km/h limit and getting blinked by zoom-zoomies if I hog the left lane too long).

Builds & Hoods updates
So inspired by my trip in Germany, I shifted my focus from Windenburg builds to giving the original Via Veronaville Lots makeovers because I want to draw those houses for a panel in my TS2 comic.
For Windenburg, I don't use the Bergisches Land as inspiration, as the original Windenburg backdrop buildings consist of those tall multi-OG old houses, which is less common in the towns of Bergisches Land. For this subhood instead, I rather get my inspiration from cutesy old towns like Monschau (NRW), Adenau (RLP), and various towns in Hessen. Occasionaly, I browse on eBay Kleinanzeigen for ads of old/half-timbered WGH apartments with the hope to find good floorplans. I imagine that the Windslar area is another hamlet-y Ortsteil of Windenburg, but located higher up in the hills.

Update Baumann household (link: https://imgur.com/Q0FR8MJ )
I've rearranged the Baumann family and its relatives in Obsidian (link: https://imgur.com/a/5x2xcEH ). So Nikolas now has only one sister, and his Male relatives are cousins. Which household is most likely to stay with their widowed mom in her multigen house, Nikolas or Margret? I was thinking of Margret because Nikolas may have had more desire to move out because of his Romance Aspiration.

Buid updates
My apologies for the confusion. I will repost my image links to builds and households if I discuss them from now on for more clarity.

Here's my BaWü Fachwerk apartment build: https://imgur.com/a/64O4Mnp . I haven't made up yet which households rely on government benefits, aside of Felege.

Bonn apartment ( https://imgur.com/a/AocV9DR ): OG1 and OG2 are 111 m2 each. Felege is a 6-Sim refugee household (4 kids, but no pets): https://imgur.com/HCghB55

Multi-gen FWH ( https://imgur.com/a/9ZH0I0Z ): here's the link to the Behr household (6 Sims, 2 cats): https://imgur.com/ZoJ2F7m

I am glad that you enjoyed your vacation.

I am not sure if I have ever been to Bergisches Land (except for the cities there, of course). I have more knowledge about the Eifel and some other places that you also use as inspiration. And there always can be exceptions to what is common as Germany is so diverse (hundreds of sovereign, mostly small countries in the past, religiously divided, landscapes from coastal to alpine), lots of influence by and migration from other countries).

A village or hamlet without full-time farmers is rather untypical. Big yards are typical, even for farmers, because it is more convenient. In places with limited road access, they usually just have a different shape (behind the house, rather narrow and very long).

I am not sure whether I understood the part about metal factories correctly. People used to work in the factories first and then switched to agriculture? If that is correct, the question is what these people did before there were factories as I assume that quite a few buildings of this place were built before the beginning of the industrialization and such a remote location also might not be the best place for people commuting to work (at a time when they had to walk to work). It is possible that mining and metal working already were the main profession before the beginning of the industrialization. In that case, people rather worked in small manufactures aand workshops in their village/hamlet. That even might be an explanation for the detached way of building: If one building catched fire while working, it would not spread through the whole village/hamlet. But without more information, that is just speculation.

I am not sure whether a town with 3000 inhabitants still can be a Straßendorf. It has to have quite a few smaller roads in addition to the main road to offer enough space for all the houses. You might be right about thee balconies as they also are common in the alpine regions for big houses that have quite a bit of distance to the neighbouring houses. It might also be related to the weather. Rain mostly occurs on one side of a mountain, but not on the other sides. If you live on the wetter side of the mountain, it is quite convenient if you have some outdoor space that is covered from rain, e.g. for drying clothes.

It definitely is common that the amount of detached houses in the outskirts of a village/town is bigger than in the center. If you already have a long way to the village center, it does not matter that much if it is even a bit longer. And in the outskirts, you have more houses that were built at a later date when people cared more about having some distance from their neighbors.

I have no explanation why some of these houses did not have curtains. The Jägerzäune might be a regional thing or also due to the landscape of the villages and towns that you visited as those fences can be built rather easily, while some other fences require small foundations in the ground for the fence posts. Jägerzäune also exist in my home region, but there they are mostly common as fences for weekend cottages (without electricity and running water) at the edge of the forest, not for regular houses.

You might want to research if the big wave of Polish immigrants in the second half of the 19th century only settled in the Ruhrgebiet or whether they also settled in Bergisches Land. Many of them came to work in the metal industry and of course also influenced their new home area.

The 130 km/h advise is only relevant if you are involved in an accident as it will have an effect on which insurance has to pay which part of the damages. You only should use the left lane while you overtake another vehicle, otherwise you have to drive on the right lane. If there is a middle lane, you may remain on that lane if there are slower vehicles on the right lane every now and then. As long as you are overtaking another vehicle, you can ignore the blinking cars behind you. You have as much right to overtake as they do.



Baumann household
Do I understand the new relationships correctly? Nikolas seems to be single now and his previous wife now is connected to one of his cousins? If yes, I think that it is more likely that he still lives with his mom. Children with a family of their own are more likely to move out than children who are single and women in average move out at a younger age than men. Therefore, it is plausible that Margret moved out first and Nikolas then simply stayed. However, such decisions are highly individual depending on the relationships between all the people involved, income/wealth of each involved party, the spouse's parental home, location of the house, workplace, school etc. and many more things. Therefore, both choices are plausible as long as you have the right backstory.
The aspiration does not have to be a problem as the mother might not even notice the different women (depending on the house layout or if her son prefers to stay the night at the women's places) or might not care and many sons enjoy it when their mothers still cook and do the laundry for them.
Just for the record: Margret is a rather uncommon version of that name. Margarete, Margarethe, Margareta and Margaretha (ordered according to frequency) all are more common versions.



BaWü Fachwerk apartment
Kent Kappe: While the size would be okay for him, I would expect him to live in a more presentable place - one where he does not have to use the back entrance (due to the shop), one that has a balcony, roof terrace or something like that, one, where he has an individual parking or garage (difficult with the apartment life game mechanics and the style of the neighborhood) and one that has a wider staircase and most likely also an elevator. Moreover: What kind of job does he have? If he works in a science-related job (according to his skills) or in the Capp family business, his workplace might not be located in the town center and the daily commute might not be too enjoyable.
As long as households do not receive government benefits for their housing, a 90 m² apartment should be fine for any household for which I suggested 80-85 m².



Bonn apartment
The apartment in OG2 (or an apartment of identical size in OG1) would work for them, if they moved in very recently. For six people, the maximum apartment size with state benefits is 120 m². Babies are not taken into consideration for this limit and for five people, the maximum size is 105 m².
In RL, they most likely would live in a smaller apartment because the demand for apartments is higher than the supply and landlords can choose their tenants. People with migration background often directly are rejected and being unemployed and most likely with a mediocre Schufa (credit investigation company) score does not improve the situation either. Therefore, in RL, they would have moved into a smaller apartment when the family still had fewer members and then would have tried to find a bigger apartment after the births without success. If your famly has any more children during the course of play, therefore, I would have them continue to live in the 111 m² apartment.



Multi-gen FWH
The house definitely is big enough for the family. If it already has been family-owned for a longer period of time, it also should be possible financially.
If you want to keep the two kitchens, it would be quite common that the elders live on the ground floor while the younger family lives upstairs. You might want to do some small layout adjustments to make this work better. There should be a full bath on the ground floor and the office and mini hallway maybe can be turned into something more useful. The room with the question mark maybe can be connected to the big hallway.

Bergisches Land
My focus has now shifted to this area, in particular Oberbergisches Land, though I still want to use the Ahr villages as reference for hood road layout ideas. Cologne is the most nearby big city (~30 mins driving) of Oberbergisches Kreis. I looked up the addresses of the FWH with extensive Anbau (= annex/extension?) in the 3k village, and it turns out they are not listed as monuments. Therefore, I assume the owners more freedom to extend their houses with balconies/garage etc. than the owners of listed monuments. Some monumental FWH do have some Anbau, but that's becase they were only listed as monuments in the late 80s or later, so I assume it was more easy to extend houses before they were protected. And I understood the rules regarding the extent of extension/Anbau and renovations on a monument is highly dependant of the regional monumental protection laws. Most of the monumental detached FWH in that hamlet village higher up the hills do not have any subsidiary buildings. Those detached buildings were probably mainly built in 18th - 19th century and they indeed had big gardens for their own produce. I understood it was a poor village with lack of nearby industry and the soil yielded poor harvest, hence the FWH were not replaced by solid houses. The Jägerzäune type of fences are actually common at regular Bürgerhäuser in that area.

Meanwhile, I've gathered a lot of monument inspiration for giving the Via Veronaville Lots makeovers while keeping some of its architectural details the same (solid walls at EG, Zwerchgiebel). I just started with those makeovers, so I'm not ready yet to screenshot them.

Eifel
For comparison, do you know why the houses were mostly built as Bauernhöfer instead of Bürgerhäuser? Was the soil structure not too swampy to build agricultural fields on the hills? And do you have insight on why the farms were not built as Einzelhöfer in the outskirts of the village centers, unlike in certain Weilern of the Bergisches Land?

Baumann household
Obsidian album: https://imgur.com/a/5x2xcEH
updated Obsidian tree overview: https://imgur.com/nSV1iUv
No, Nikolas is still paired his Yugoslavic wife Danijela. Then I might go for the scenario he has his own small living place (3 or 4-room MFH or a small EFH). He works at a DIY/handicraft shop, but Danijela only has side jobs at restaurants. Given this financial situation, would they have to rely on government benefits and thus live in a smaller apartment size than 90 m2?

Felege
Family bio: https://imgur.com/HCghB55
I imagine their Toddler is born in the early 2000s + their Children during mid 90s, and that they have moved to Germany during the first half of the 90s (depending on when the East-African refugee wave was happening). The Teen Markus was a Baby or a Toddler when they immigrated, so the household initially consisted of 3 or 4 Sims. What maximum living space size would probably fit them in this case?

Capp/Kappe & Monty headcanons
I recall you've assumed that Consort would be a strict Sim and only lets his grandkids spend time with their friends on weekends in the afternoon. Do you imagine he wants them to come back home for dinner, or are they allowed to have dinner at their friend's place? Are they even allowed to have sleepovers at home or at their friends? However, would Consort be less strict towards Tybalt? After all, in the Dutch translation of TS2, Hermia's bio states that she wonders why "her brother Tiberius is actually allowed to run loose", even though her bio of the original English version is: "She often wonders what rock her brother Tybalt crawled out from under."

And if there's an annual village event (e.g. Schützenfest), would the Capps rather go on a trip out of town during such events to avoid interactions with the Montys?
(I wonder this because general German social customs might differ from general Dutch social customs regarding certain details)

Would it be doable for Romeo and Juliette to hang out somewhere in the forest at the outskirts of Veronaville, or would they be caught too easily by hikers and dog walkers?
(I always have lived in the same big Mittelstadt surrounded by Kleinstädte, and my partner also lives in a Kleinstadt, so I'm not known with typical social situations and customs in smaller town sizes, such as a Kleindorf of ~500 inhabitants in this case)

If Romeo invites his friends at his place, how likely would Ü16 Mercutio join briefly, even though he's older than U16 Romeo + his U16 friends, and how likely would the U16 friends drink beer at the Monty home if the grandparents aren't too strict?

During the workweek, how common was it for teenagers to hang out with friends from the same village after having done homework + dinner? (both in spring and fall/winter)

Tellier household
Family bio: https://imgur.com/vdJ4W5h
Build pics with questions about rooms included: https://imgur.com/a/4R1vYbW .
Obsidian notes about individual Sims: https://imgur.com/a/F9HFQdF
Since both parents have low interest in Environment but moderate to high interest in Weather, how would their garden look like regarding flowers and shrubs that need maintenance? I imagine Margarete would have her own kitchen garden in the backyard due to her high interest in Food and eventually having side jobs at the Italian restaurant run by the Montys.
Since I want to create a cat for them, in which rooms would they be allowed to sleep indoors, given that Margarete is a Neat Sim? And in which room would they most likely place the litter box? What kind of backyard fences are common to let the cat roam around in their spacious backyard, but not at the street side due to living at the main road?

Bergisches Land

Yes, an Anbau is an annex/extension.
As long as the buildings were not yet protected, the owners had the right to do any kind of modification that was in accordance with the then valid building regulations. At very early times, it might even be possible that no regulations were in place at all.
There are 16 monument protection laws, one for each German state. Thus, there should not be too big differences within one state. However, house owners have to do requests for every single change they plan (at least that's what the relatives and friends who live in protected houses always told me when they planned renovations) and with so many case-by-case decisions, it is inevitable that there are differences in interpretation of the laws, sometimes even depending on which person within a municipal authority handles the request. Some decisions really are incomprehensible. Here is a short video (3 minutes) about such an example in Hamburg: https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&sour...mcSZA3qPouLuzTG Auto-translation of captions is available.
Just for the record: There is no real need to "replace" a FWH with a different type of house. When FWHs were wellbuilt and are well taken of, they can endure for centuries. There still exist about 20 FWHs from the 13th century in Germany, for example. There usually had to be some kind of reason to replace a house, e.g. after a fire, destruction due to war, decay because the house was not built well enough etc. A few decades after WW2 (when the housing shortage was not that big any more), central heating systems also became an incentive for replacing a house, but at that time, it is quite likely that houses already were protected by the monument preservation authority.


Bürgerhaus

The use of this term for houses in a village is a bit confusing for me. In the past, the term Bürger did not refer to every German person. To become a Bürger, you had to fulfill certain criteria and when you became a Bürger, you were granted certain rights. I do not want to go into detail too much, but for many centuries, that term was exclusively used for (a small part of the) people who lived in a town, not for people who lived in a village. And a Bürgerhaus was the (often attached/row) house of such a Bürger that was built within the town wall and on a lot that belongs to said Bürger. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCrgerhaus Only in 1919, when the Weimar constitution came into effect, all Germans became Bürger.
That is why I wonder that the term Bürgerhaus is used for houses that are not in a town and that are detached houses. Did the people to whom you talked maybe use the term incorrectly? Is the village maybe not a village but a town? Did people use another term for these houses before 1919 and only change it afterwards? I am not sure whether it is possible to find the reason for the (wrong?) use of this term, but the knowledge definitely could help you to understand a bit more why and how this village is special.


Eifel

The term Bauernhof refers to the whole farm including stables, barns etc. Typical layouts of farm buildings vary between different regions due to aspects like climate, soil types, but also inheritance laws. The layouts had proven to be the most practical ones for farming over the centuries (with small alterations every now and then).
A Bürgerhaus in contrast does not offer space for livestock and harvested products (except maybe on small level for self-supply). Instead, on the ground floor they had a big room that was either used as shop (for traders) or as a workshop (for craftsmen). So why should a farmer choose a house layout that is not/barely suited for his profession and lifestyle?
Soil on hills should not be swampy as the water should flow downhill. When mountains are high enough, clouds might not be able to get past it so that on one side of the mountain there is too much rain for agriculture, like in some places in the Alps. Nevertheless, livestock breeding still is possible in these places. And I do not think that the Eifel hills are big enough to cause such an effect in large, contiguous areas.
I am not sure why the farms were not built as Einzelhöfe, but I have the impression that a denser construction style simply was preferred. When a local ruler founded a new settlement, he usually wanted the settlement to become big and relevant and eventually to gain town rights. If all the buildings are built with a big distance to each other, that will not be possible. Also: How can a village center develop if nobody wants to build a house/farm there? A more densely built-up area also increases the chances that the inhabitants can protect each other in case of attacks/wars because they can see what is going on. Moreover, even villages usually had some kind of fortified building (often the church). In war times, all the inhabitants could go there and be safe(r) there. If the graveyard also was fortified, they were able to bring along their cattle which would make it easier to rebuild their homes after the destruction. Of course, this only works, if you live close enough to said fortified building/area to make it there in time.
Another relevant aspect could be the inheritance laws in that region. Einzelhöfe only make sense when the land around the farm belongs to you. That is only guaranteed in regions where the oldest son inherits everything. In regions where all sons or all children inherit/receive as dowry something, after a few generations, hardly any part of the land around the farm still would belong to that farm.
Relatively new Einzelhöfe also might be a result of the Flurbereinigung in the 70s. In many places, strips of land had become so narrow due to inheritance distribution that it often was impossible to use modern machines and vehicles for agriculture. That is why the land was redistributed to create bigger fields. The fields closer to the village were more attractive to the farmers and everybody wanted to have those while hardly anybody wanted to have fields further away from the village. That is why in some places, many fields further away from the village were bundled and the farmer who would take that land was allowed to build a farm on that land (plus maybe also some kind of financial compensation) so that they would have a much closer distance to their fields than the farmers who remained in the village.


Baumann household

As it would be too time-consuming to research realistic incomes and limits for benefits from 20 years ago, I used today's numbers instead. With their income, they definitely would not be entitled to receive ALG2. They might be just within the income limits for Wohngeld or slightly above it (and therefore not entitled to any benefits), but Wohngeld afaik does not have any requirements related to apartment size so that you do not have any strict limits for the apartment size. Nevertheless, you should not pick a too big rented apartment/house as they probably could not afford this.
However, it does not necessarily have to be a rented home. He could have inherited a house from his grandparents. In that event, he would have to pay off the shares of the other heirs, but houses in rural areas (especially old and barely renovated ones) are not that expensive so that credit instalments should be afordable (especially if Danijela had a better job before they had children) and the credit would be paid off after several years while rent payments would be there forever.
One comment regarding the side jobs: Mini jobs only were introduced in 2003. Before, even side jobs had full taxes and duties which made side jobs the same as a regular part-time job. As the children were born way before 2003, you might want to consider this for your backstory.


Felege

In NRW, the apartment/house size limits are 80 m², 95 m², 110 m² and 125 m² for 3, 4, 5 and 6 inhabitants respectively.
In RLP, the apartment/house size limits are 80 m², 90 m², 105 m² and 120 m² for 3, 4, 5 and 6 inhabitants respectively.
Children young enough to still sleep in their parents' bedroom are not yet considered an inhabitant.
Their real apartmentsize will depend on when they last moved to another apartment/house. Housing shortage should be a less problem in rural areas than in cities, but still might be a problem in non-ex-GDR states. Prejudices and racism might be a bigger problem in rural areas than in cities. Nevertheless, it also depends on luck whether/when you find a new apartment. Thus, you can choose more or less any date that you want as long as you choose the right backstory for it.


Capp & Monty headcanons

Dinner:
I guess that would depend on who the friend and the friend's family is. When a connection to that family would be useful in Consort's opinion, he would be supportive, otherwise not so much.

Tybalt:
It would be possible, but not a must. Many people still have traditional role models, parents also are more worried that their daughters might be assaulted than their sons and if you follow the matrimonial tradition of the Capp family, only the girls would be needed to continue the family while Tybalt would be considered part of his spouse's family upon marriage.

Village event:
I do not think that the Capp family would be out of town just to avoid contact with the Montys. They consider Veronaville their village and would not leave the field to the Montys. I also imagine that their relationship to the village is of great importance to them. Therefore, they would be at least paying/non-active members of all clubs and be on the board of some of the clubs to have some influence. Therefore, they might also have an important role in some of the village events. Some Capps also might be in the parish council and/or involved in municipal politics for additional influence.
In contrast, I am not sure whether the Montys would attend. I am not sure whether they would reciprocate the Capps' hostility. Nevertheless, I do not imagine that Patrizio and Isabella were really involved in clubs. Due to owning the family restaurant, many family members also would work during the event. And the family might not be too happy that their sales will drop during the event because the club that is organizing the event will take care of the catering (usually barbecue and some other dishes for lunch and dinner, cake and coffee in the afternoon) themselves because that is how they raise money for the club treasury. I could imagine the youngest Monty generation to attend the village events if the event is not too boring and if their friends attend as well and if it does not conflict with the working hours of the teenagers.

Hanging out in the forest:
There always will be some risk of being caught, but depending on the exact location it might not be too big. The downside is that when somebody sees you, the person most likely will immediately recognize you. However, there is not necessarily a guarantee that the people will talk about it. A friend of mine was caught smoking at the age of twelve. The elderly lady who caught her threatened to inform her parents, but never did it.
I think that the risk would be bigger that some of Romeo and Juliet's friend might accidentially mention the relationship in presence of somebody who should not know about it and start gossip that way. Nevertheless, I think that it might be difficult for Romeo und Juliet to meet regularly that way as I assume that Consort will ask his grandchildren where they want to go whenever they want to leave the house (at least whenever Consort is at home at the right time and knows about it).
Being in the outdoors also might leave some marks on shoes, clothing and bike, especially after rain or snow. Moreover, wild boars and foxes should exist in pretty much all of Germany and wolves at least existed in some regions (although mostly in ex-GDR regions back at that time).

Romeo and Mercutio:
As there are just a few children per school year in a village, age is not that relevant for finding friends and 2-3 years age difference is not that uncommon. If Romeo and Mercutio go along well, I even could imagine them having a common group of friends within the village.
I do not think that the grandparents would mind unless anybody becomes noticeably drunken in the grandparents' presence. If I remember correctly, Italy is one of the countries where it used to be common to drink wine along with meals and where children also are served a small glass of wine (often mixed with water).
It also is likely that the grandparents do not know the exact ages of Romeo's friends and therefore might even not be aware that they are younger than 16. And as the teenagers usually will be in another room than the grandparents, they might not even notice the beer. Some of the non-strict parents of my friends even bought alcohol for their children on special ocasions (e.g. birthday parties). The amount was limited so that nobody could get drunk, but it still was illegal to give e.g. liquor to 16 year-old teenagers.

Hanging out during workweek:
That definitely happened, but the frequency depended very much on the individual person. From daily to less than once per week, I have seen everything. Not everybody did homework before meeting their friends (some even did not do homework at all). Hanging out in the afternoon was more common than hanging out after dinner, at least for the younger teenagers. From the age of 16 on (or a bit earlier for those who looked a bit older), bars and clubs also became an option and meeting friends from other villages/towns was easier because chances were high that at least one person of the group of friends already was 18 and had a driving license. Happy hours and non-mainstream music often were only available on weekdays and going there until midnight was (and still is) completely legal. If you wanted to stay longer, you needed a friend who was older than 18 and your parents had to sign a document (or you had to fake that document and signature convincingly) that they allowed you to stay out after midnight under the supervision of that friend.


Tellier household

Interests:
I am not sure whether the environment and weather interests necessarily have to affect the garden. The low environment interest also could mean that they do not care about sustainability. Maybe they only use the black waste bin because they are too lazy to sort the garbage, maybe they do not care about wasting water (using bath tubs instead of showers, having a pool in the garden - even if it is just a mobile overground one, using sprinklers for their plants all the time) etc. Interest in weather can mean that they care about the scientific part and watch the forecast on TV, use that weather-specific object and maybe you find a water meter as CC. Growing produce due to high food interest sounds plausible to me. Shrubs might also be okay as they survive even if the sims do not take care of them. Flowers would die rather quickly so that they might not be the best option.

Cat:
Do you really expect the cat to stay where its owners might want it to stay? That is not how things work with cats.
Bathrooms and hallways are common places for litter boxes. If it is in the bathroom, the other family members may not block that room too often/long.
I do not know a single backyard where a cat could not escape. Regular fences usually may be up to 1.2 meters high, sight protection fences (if permitted) up to about 1.8 meters. Exact heights vary depending on state and municipality. Cats in average can jump 1.5 to 2 meters high. Thus, many cats will be able to jump even on a sight protection fence without help and cats who cannot jump as high will surely find some kind of object lying around in the garden that is close enough to the fence to jump from that object. Moreover, it is rather uncommon to have a fence around the whole lot. In states with Einfriedungspflicht (vast majority of states including RLP and NRW), lot owners have to build a fence on the right side of their lot while on the left side, there already is a fence by their neighbor (because it is the right side of the neighbor's lot). Such a fence has to be built in 50 cm distance to the lot border which means that on the left side of the lot there will be a gap at the front and back unless you decide to have two fences next to each other.


Vaulted cellars

Recently, I read that in a (undefined) region of Germany it is common to have brick floors in vaulted cellars as the bricks help to regulate the humidity in the cellar. I have never seen a brick floor in any of the cellars that I know, but I just wanted to let you know. If you are not sure what material to use for the floor for some households, that might be an option.

Sims updates
I haven't been active with simming last month, except some bits of rebuilding the Via Veronaville Lots with more Bergisches FWH.

Bürgerhaus definition
The Weiler with the detached FWH has always been a small village and not a place with town rights, although there's not much known about its settlement history, except that it is a former Luftkurort. The person I speak with meant that a "Bürgerhaus" is a house for people with administrative professions, such as teachers and civil service officials. The other old non-farmhouses could indeed be built as craftsmen workshops, such as a brewery.

Build/buy
Thank you for educating me about the infrastructure history!
I haven't been active with building Lots in Windenburg for a while. But if I have built some new Lots in Windenburg and wonder how likely they would suit for these households, I will post a question again.

Tellier household
My late cats used to roam around in the streets since due to low and slow traffic in my neighborhood, so I'm not familiar with the difficulties around trying to prevent cats from escaping the lot.
A swimming pool is difficult to place as I want to make their garden partly sloped, but I imagine they would own a jacuzzi or a mobile swimming pool CC.

Premade headcanons
I have heard that my area of interest used to have an early immigration wave of Italians instead of Poles because Italians were skilled in mining stones for road construction. In that case, how likely would the Montys live here for multiple generations already instead of being 1st-gen guest-worker immigrants?

I left away those subheaders without concrete questions. Feel free to include them again when new questions pop up.


Bürgerhaus

Administrative professions:
I guess that this person used the term incorrectly then.
In a small village, there usually are not than many people with an administrative profession. When a village was a municipality of its own and not part of a bigger municipality, they barely had enough pupils in each grade so that pupils of different grades were taught in the same classrom by the same teacher. Depending on the number of children (and the municipality's finances), there often just were one or two teachers, teaching four or even all eight grades at once. Such a village also only would have a Volksschule (equivalent to the later Hauptschule, just with even one year less). Hardly anybody from a village would attend a Gymnasium and if they did, they would go to the nearest town to do so.
Teachers in villages also usually were poorly paid which means that they could not afford too nice houses. I know a person who has genealogy as a hobby and due to their research, this person also has quite a lot of data about village teachers. They often were (initially) not allowed to marry because they were considered too poor to support a family. They usually lived together with the woman, nevertheless, and had some illegitimate children together, but probably fewer than they otherwise would have had due to the stigma. They often got the permission to marry some years later when the risk of having more children was significantly lower.
The number of civil service officials also was quite limited. Elected functions like mayor or municipal council only work part-time in those functions and have a regular full-time job in addition to it (it still is that way today in small municipalities). I could not find historic information, but I could find information for today from statistik-bw.de (therefore for Baden-Württemberg). Municipalities with less than 1000 inhabitants in average have 4,3 full-time employees per 1000 inhabitants in the municipal administration. As these administrative employees have many tasks that did not yet exist in the past, the number of employees should have been lower in the past.
In addition to the two jobs that you mentioned, the priest and the pastoral administration also could have had a townhouse-like house, if the village had its own parish. But even with that, I see a potential for maybe ten people in such jobs and as it was common that sons took up their fathers' professions, the number of houses might even have been lower.

Crafts:
Craftsmen workshops definitely were common, but not necessarily the crafts that you have in mind. Crafts related to producing food or drinks typically existed in towns and cities to produce for the population there while in villages, the farmers usually produced such products themselves as they had access to the necessary starting products and municipal facilities (like communal bake house or brewery), sometimes even own facilities. Therefore, craftsmen in such professions in a village would not have many customers or a market near them, oten making the profession unprofitable. Common crafts in villages were those that farmers needed, but could not do themselves. Thus, there usually were blacksmiths, coopers (producing barrels), carpenters, well diggers, wheelwrights etc. This also explains why the vast majority of such houses were converted to purely residential buildings at a later point in time: Some of these professions now are (nearly) extinct and the others have so much different requirements today that people with that job work outside of their homes.


Tellier household

Enclosures:
I do not know any person who ever tried to limit their cat to just the garden. Either cats are indoors all the time (maybe with access to a balcony and a net above the balcony if the owners fear that the cat might try to jump off the balcony) or they have access to the outside and can go wherever they want to go there. Keeping cats indoors exclusively is much more common in cities and towns than in villages.

Main roads:
I grew up on the main road of my home village and only very few cats died due to traffic within those few hundreds of meters where I could notice it. Cars and trucks definitely were not slow (many decided to keep 60-70 km/h until the first turn of the street a few hundred meters further into the village), but there still was relatively little traffic. The exact location of a village also may be relevant for that. My village was inbetween the main town and a smaller town of the administrative district, but there was a second route that connected both towns through another village that way maybe a kilometer shorter than the route through my home village. Therefore, the majority of people who wanted to go from one of those towns to the other one would choose the other route and mainly people from my home village itself were the ones on the streets of the village.

Pools:
Mobile swimming pools are much more common than jacuzzis. There also are really big ones, e.g. this one with a length of 10 meters: https://www.aufstellpools.de/161-me...0-kit730eco.jpg


Premade headcanons

Maybe somebody from Italy has read and can help with more information as I do not have that much information on this topic.

There was some migration, but numbers were only a small percentage of those during Gastarbeiter times. Most of that early migration was from the Alpine region of Italy, not from the South, thus from a part of Italy where the population looks just like average Middle Europeans. I assume that a lot of those early migrants were native speakers of German as quite a few Bavarians settled Alpine regions outside of Bavaria, as Southern Tyrol used to be part of Tyrol for a very long period of time and as big parts of Northern Italy belonged to the Holy Roman Empire of German Nations for many centuries and therefore had German influence. Also, the unification of Italy took place at a relatively late point in time. Therefore, any early migrants probably would not even feel and identify as Italian, not speak Italian anymore (if they ever did), not use Italian given names anymore (if the ever did) etc. If the Montys migrated generations ago, they also most likely would have lost their South Italian look by now as their ancestors had to find spouses and those spouses would most likely have a more Middle European appearance. Thus, no, I do not think that it is very plausible that the Montys migrated several generations before Patrizio and Isabella. Of course, the current backstory also is not perfect, as it is unrealistic that first generation migrant workers own such an expensive estate. However, I think that can be fixed in a more plausible way with a lottery win or something like that.



If the videos of the first German Big Brother season were helpful for you: waipu.tv now has the first two seasons available. To watch them, you need an account, but not paid subscription. The two seasons are supposed to be available for three months. It is possible that additional seasons will be available afterwards or even earlier if the interest is big enough.

Via Veronaville makeovers
https://imgur.com/a/2jBjTQU
Here are some of my recent build screenshots from the last months. I want to place Via Veronaville 54 at the village center around the church, and shift the middle road on an intersection using LotAdjuster (I already tested this with a test Lot). But first I want to redesign the hood road layout for the Capp side by using two NRW villages at a river as references for road layouts.

Tellier household (via Veronaville 26)
https://imgur.com/a/4R1vYbW
Can you help me out with some of my questions about the room layouts for this room? In case you cannot view the Imgur captions well, I post them here as well:
* Since Thomas' sister Sandra just attends secondary school as well (5th grade Gym), would it suit better to place the 2nd computer in the common hobby room instead of his bedroom so it's shared by both kids? Or would it make more sense to keep it in Thomas' room in case he would need it more often for schoolwork than her and that she can use the computer downstairs?
* DG: The left room could be a storage/guest room, whilst I want to make the right room into a hobby/playroom, where Hans' guitars are placed amongst other stuff. What other functional objects would fit well in the DG hobby room?

Other Italian households
Rocca household: https://imgur.com/IfA9fIZ
Romeo household: https://imgur.com/1quxfiG
How likely would the households Rocca and Romeo be (Northern) Italians that already live in Germany for more than one generation? I don't have a solid backstory about them yet, but the TS4 premades still have Italian names (Sergio and Paulo).

Tellier household

Short-cord version of the hanging lamp
Maybe it works with the shiftable everything mod?

Computer location
At that time, pupils did not need a computer for school too often. Homework was done in handwriting on paper. It was only needed a few times per schoolyear to prepare presentation etc. Thus, if you place it in Thomas' room, it is clear that he uses it for gaming and/or chatting regularly.
What are the rules for using the other computer? Could Sandra use the other computer? How old is Thomas? I can see alcohol bottles in the picture that would be legal at 18+, but also toys that might be more suited for a younger age. Did Thomas buy the computer or did his parents buy it? Are his parents rather strict and conservative or do they rather have a laissez-faire attitude? Does the computer need internet access and, if yes, does the room have internet access? Wlan does not always work that well on different levels of a building and having computers on two different floors means more work if both should have internet access. I cannot answer your questions with my current knowledge, but I think that my questions might help you to find a good answer yourself.
Just for the record: the big shelf looks quite empty compared with the rest of the room. Maybe, you also can use the shiftable everything mod or OMSPs to put more stuff into the shelf.

DG layout
That 1-tile corner really looks strange. Would it be an option to move the one wall piece on the right side of the hallway one tile upwards and to delete the wall piece on the left side? It would make more sense if that part of the hallway had been a 3x3 room before the wall breakthrough and not just a 3x2 room.

Hobby/Playroom
Are you sure that the whole room is just supposed to be for hobbies? Imho the house definitely lacks some kind of storage - a place where the family e.g. can put Christmas decorations during summer and skiing equipment during winter.
You might add an exercise bike and a (decorative) yoga mat as sports equipment. As the musical instruments require a lot of space, I would not add more of those, but maybe you can find some purely decorative musical instruments and/or instrument cases.

Clothes drying rack
I am not sure whether the place of this item is a good choice. The hallway is not very big so that it would take quite some time until the clothes would be dry and at least when the humidity is a bit higher, the clothes also might not smell too nicely due to that. I do not have a better suggestion where you could place it, however. As the family has a small garden, I would prefer a rotary clothes dryer outdoors anyway. Drying outdoors works perfectly fine even at temperatures below zero.


Other Italian households

Given their ages, they should be the second generation that was already born in Germany. With the combinations of names and looks, imho it is rather unrealistic that their ancestors already were in Germany pre-war.
Several of the given names are names that Italians in Germany would be less likely to use than Italians in Italy. The use of such names (like Saturio and Narciso) would become less with each generation and the use of names (relatively) common in both cultures/languages (like Vera and Elena) would increase. This is especially true for a name like Andrea which in Germany is a typical girl's name while in Italy it is a boy's name. While it is not illegal to name your son Andrea (as long as the child has a second non-ambiguous given name), it already seems an unlikely choice for a 3rd generation child and it would be even less plausible the longer the family lives in Germany.



Orientation of churches
As I had an interesting discussion about this topic recently, I wondered whether you are aware that many churches are orientated in a very similar way (altar in the east, main entrance in the west). Pretty much all medieval churches in Germany have that orientation and even when that old church was replaced, a new replacement usually had the same orientation. After the middle age, the orientation was not obligatory anymore, but the preferred option whenever it was possible.
You can find more information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientation_of_churches (The German version of this article contains a bit more information than the English one.)

Tellier
Obsidian notes repost: https://imgur.com/a/obsidian-tellier-household-F9HFQdF

I have to check if the lamp cord won't clip with the top floor even after one shift up.

Parents: Father Hans (bio/chem/French Realschule teacher) is fairly laidback. Regarding Margarete (stay-at-home mom with culinary side jobs who enjoys drinking wine), I assume she is probably not very strict regarding underage drinking, but rather she is strict regarding tidiness and cleaniness because of her high Neat score. Also, I imagine she's new-agey spiritual and/or an active Catholic based on her high score in Paranormal interest. Since I picture that Margerete is a stereotypical female German villager, what aspects regarding the house and her kids' behavior would be her main concerns in order to maintain a good reputation in her village?

Thomas room: I assumed that alcohol usage (even spirits mixed with soda) was already common at age 14/15 in small villages, but I can imagine it's too young to display that many bottles on a shelf in his room. Would one bottle of beer or Breezer be more plausible, or none at all?
I assume his father gifted him the 2nd PC for his 13th or 14th birthday (2003 or '04), and assumed he also had cable internet access. The fact that a teenager could have their own computer with cable internet in the early 00s is based on my Dutch teenage experiences, so I don't know how much behind the German technology was back then. Sandra could still use the main computer on the EG for her own games, though the household also owns a game console in the living room.
What deco toys are less suited for a 14/15 year old teenage boy and which deco clutter would suit better instead? His main interests are sci-fi, entertainment (mainstream movies and games, and hip-hop music), fashion (sporty/hip-hop in bright colors), food (sausages, pizza and Döner ), and sports (especially football/soccer).

DG: I was also open to add other stuff than hobby objects in the main room, so yeah, I can decorate the non-functional sloped spaces with storage deco. I was thinking of adding more deco cabinets and closets and perhaps find a laid-down Christmas tree CC. Would carboard moving boxes also work as off-season storage deco? I placed a 1-tile corner in the hallway to make the door accessible because otherwise, the door gets blocked by the staircase. I can remove the walls and place the decorative vertical open beams on the same position as the staircase railing instead. I still have to rework the backyard because I want to make it partly sloped and give them a basic storage shed instead of a garden house. I still have to find a good Immo floorplan reference for where to position their vaulted cellar, as the FWH Immo ads with floorplans included usually don't show where the entrance to the vaulted cellar is, unlike ads containing floorplans with regular cellars.

Italian households
Do you mean the adult Italians are 2nd gen and their teens/kids 3rd gen? Do you know by your RL or media experiences what Italo-German masculine names are more common for 3rd gens? (can be anything, as Andrea:s is an OC sibling and not a TS4 premade recreation)

In-game updates
https://imgur.com/a/eZmOjDJ
I've been working on redesigning the road layout of Veronaville based on a small, yet touristic village in Sauerland with plenty of detached FWH, although I assume a fair amount of them were built after WWII because this village was affected. The road layout of the Monty side will be based on a different village because it will mainly contain of post-war Neubau (still having to fix some of the road layouts, so no screenshots yet). Never heard about preferred church orientations, so your tip will come in handy if I'm setteled on where to place the church!

Tellier

Hans - headcanon
At big companies, you have a quite solid job protection. I am not a lawyer, but I think that it would be difficult or even impossible to be fired for a mistake. It would require something like a deliberate violation of work processes or ignoring the directions of his boss to be fired (and even then it might have to happen more than once to be sufficient for being fired).
I also think that it would be difficult to find a new job with such a backstory. Somebody who is working for such a big company usually would look for a new job while still working in the current job. Therefore, not being employed anymore definitely will rise questions in a job interview or be the reason for not being invited to a job interview at all. This would especially be true in case of a "fristlose Kündigung" (termination without notice period) as the job certificate from the previous employer then would have that date on it while regular terminations only happen at the end (or less common 15th) of a month. The job certificates are really important for finding a new job in Germany. There might be some tricks for hiding it, like presenting an intermediate certificate and telling the new employer that the final certificate is not ready yet, but in a rural area chances are high that somebody working for the potential new employer knows a former coworker of Hans so that the reason for the termination will become known nevertheless.
Therefore, Hans' backstory should be toned down a bit so that it was not a firing. Maybe his company merged with another company and that was the reason why they needed less employees and some employees were terminated with a notice period and a payoff.

Parents
Both new-agey spiritual and active Catholic is not really possible imho.
I do not think that there is just one stereotype for female villagers. However, regarding the rest of your description, I think she would want her children to greet other villagers when they see them in the streets. She also would want them to take off their shoes when they go into somebody else's home (or at least offer to take them off).
If you go for the Catholic route instead of the new-age one, she might also make her husband and children go to church with her on Sundays, make the children be altar servers (at least the girl, the boy already is at the upper end of the age span for that), maybe even make them deliver the parochial newsletter to other households.

Thomas' room
I even know of 12 year olds who ended up in hospital with alcohol poisoning. It's really about the amount of alcohol and the type. In 2004, a law was passed that alcopops (like Bacardi Breezer) only may be sold to adults. Therefore, I think that beer is the only drink that should be on display. It may be more than a bottle - maybe a sixpack.
Do you mean cable as in cable TV or as in LAN cable? If you mean the first one: Even today only about 25 % of Germans have internet via cable and it is more common in urban areas than in rural areas. Back then it often was not available at all in rural areas - maybe because there barely was demand as TV via satellite dish is for free while cable access costs money. In my last posting, I meant the latter option, nevertheless. The internet connection usually was combined with the telephone connection and if you wanted to have LAN cables somewhere else, you had to install them first. As German houses usually are built rather solid, it is common to hide any kind of cables and tubes inside the walls. Therefore, it requires some effort when adding more cables at a later point in time, especially when there are no empty tubes available. With Fachwerkhäuser, it is even more difficult as the walls are thinner so that there might not be enough space inside and as it is not advisable to use modern materials when covering holes in partitions filled with traditional materials. So while it technically definitely is possible to have LAN cables in every room, many people did not want to do that because it would either have been a lot of work or because there would have been visible cables. I even know a family who lives in a Fachwerkhaus who had (maybe still has) quite expensive internet via satellite because they wanted to avoid the cable problem that way. (There also still are quite a few people who are afraid of WLAN because they think it might cause cancer etc.)
Just as additional information: Germany is very backward in regards to internet connection (at least in comparison with the rest of the EU). That dates back to some wrong decisions by Kohl in the 80s. We got our first internet connection in 2001 IIRC and it had less than 1 MB/s. The provider only laid cables for 50 or 100 households and those households who did not get one of those connections then had to wait for several years before more were added. It also took several years before faster internet became available. That might also be a reason why some parents preferred to have computers in a central location so that it was a bit more easy to ensure that no one causes so much traffic that the others have problems to use the internet.
Nevertheless, as the computer was a present just for Thomas and as you describe his parents as rather laid back, I could imagine that the computer is in his room and that his parents might not be against WLAN (at least unless the mother is not new-agey).
Deco: I am sorry, but I do not remember exactly what kind of toys he has in his room right now. I would try to use stuff that is more related to him. Maybe he still has one or more skateboards and put one of them on a shelf. He also could have put a soccer ball there. If he also likes watching soccer, he also might have jerseys from his favorite players (although those maybe would not be placed on a shelf). MP3 players already existed, but CDs still were popular so maybe you also could display some CDs and/or some other music-related thing. He also could display some of his favorite caps and sneakers. Maybe you also can find some star wars merchandising for his interests in sci-fi and mainstream movies. If you think that he might also be interested in Lego Technic, you could get him a Death Star although I am not sure whether Lego Technic really would match him considering how you described him.

DG
Cardboard boxes definitely are a good choice. They do not have to have the standard moving box size. Many people use boxes they got with some kind of product instead of throwing them away. You also can use specific plastic storage boxes. Any mix of boxes will work.
I would mainly use shelves (Allzweckregal), but plain closets and old furniture that looks like they did not want to have it in the main part of the house anymore also would work.
I would not place a christmas tree there. Even today only about 1/4 of German households has an artificial tree. The majority of people today still prefers natural trees and the percentage was even bigger back then.

Vaulted cellar
A regular cellar is a part of the building on top of the baseplate usually built at the same time, included in the architect's plan and requiring a building permission. Vaulted cellars in contrast are artificial caves that were dug into the ground, mostly at a time when no architects and building permissions were needed yet. They were dug at a place where people assumed that the earth and stone above the cellar were stable enough to not collapse and that location often does not match the location of the house. It even made sense to built it somewhere else so that less weight would be on top of it as old FWHs also do not have a proper base plate, just compacted earth beneath them. Most vaulted cellars that I know are separate from the house in that way that neither the cellar is beneath the house nor the entrance is inside the house. If the entrance is inside the house, it usually is a door with stairs leading away from the house and outside the earth is high enough to cover the stairs. As you plan a sloped lot, that might be an option. Most vaulted cellars also are not too big, with less floor space than the house. I also know a few bigger ones that are directly beneath the building, but these buildings often used to be breweries or other companies who needed to be able to store their goods at a low temperature. Those vaulted cellars often are used for restaurants or similar businesses today.


Italian households

Yes, that is what I meant.

I know several people with names that have German counterparts like Alessandro (Alexander) and Massimiliano (Maximilian). Some also have names that are less obvious Italian because they also are common amongst Germans like Marco (always a bit popular, never at the top of rankings) or Luca (peak of popularity in 2006 as 3rd most common name for boys born that year). People with a higher level of education have a higher tendency to use names of ancestors (like grandparents or great-grandparents) for their children.
Be aware that there are a few Italian names like Enrico and Ricardo that are/were popular amongst Germans with low education and/or typical names in former East Germany. Those names now have a certain reputation and I would assume (but did not search for evidence) that those names are less popular amongst Italians with high education for that reason.


In-game updates

Hardly any FWH were built after WW2. There already was a big decline around 1900 that continued during the following decades. So even if people wanted to built FWHs after WW2, there were only very few people left who knew how to built them from scratch so that they would not have been able to built a bigger amount of FWH in a short period of time. It is much more likely that the houses were damaged and had to be repaired. It was common that roofs and windows were damaged/destroyed. Sometimes the destruction was used as an excuse to build an additional floor on top of the house although that should be more common in bigger towns and cities where the lack of living space was a much bigger problem than in rural areas.

Tellier household
In that case, I go for the scenario that Margarete is into new-age (such as homeopathy) due to her high interest in Paranormal. Hans has neutral interest in Paranormal. So given that the Tellier household has a new-agey mother, would they more likely have satellite internet instead, and would Thomas still have internet connection on his own computer in his room?

https://imgur.com/a/ts2-tellier-redux-fall-2024-Y2qSK7b
I've made new screenshots of the rooms. My questions about layout and deco are included in the image captions.

Premade headcanons
Now I imagine that Sims with low to zero interest in Paranormal are more likely to visit the church regularly, such as most of the Capps, but also Patrizio and Bianca Monty. I'm curious, how would the feud between Capp and Monty be unfold if they visit the church simultaneously? On the other hand, Hermia Capp has zero interest in Paranormal as well, yet her clothing style is more like gothic/metal. In this case, would she more likely be a metalhead than a goth? And how would her disinterest in paranormality be expressed? What would her relationship to traditional religion be like? (I'm not very familiar with how 2000s goth/metal culture was like)

TS4/4t2 Italo premades: So if I understood correctly, are Paulo and Sergio most likely names that would be given to 3rd gen Italo-Germans from the post-war Gastarbeiter wave?

Build/Buy
ETA: when it comes to picking poster meshes, were German magazines pressed exclusively in ISO-A4 sizes? Because in my memories, Dutch magazines did *not* have consistent paper ratio sizes.


https://imgur.com/a/cc-cleanup-june-2024-6c8CG4Z
Which fireplace tools and gravestone CCs are worth keeping for my theme?

Which objects from the 4t2 Basement kit match well with storage clutter in typical German households? https://sims4t2bb.tumblr.com/basementtreasures

Do you think this closet mesh looks close enough to antique German furnutire, such as the Frankfurter Shrank? https://www.tumblr.com/jacky93sims/...-woodland-ranch

What furniture from the FB group "Lost Places Deutschland" are fitted for the Capp household? (I have access to that group)

FWH in 20th century: I assume that FWH (re)built after 1900 were more common in Bergisches land, as I've seen some from 1920s or something (real-life or online). The post-war ones in Sauerland could be reconstructions indeed.

Tellier

Unfortunately many people in Germany believe in homeopathy. Therefore, people do not necessarily have to have a high interest in paranormal to be in favour of homeopathy.
With the way you describe Margarete, they definitely would have Internet via some sort of cable as people like her would fear any kind of rays. Therefore, they also would only connect Computers to the Internet via LAN cable and not use WLAN. Regarding Thomas, it still is your decision whether you think that his parents would do the effort of laying a cable to his room hidden in a wall.

Litter box: As far as I know, it should be in a place that is always accessibly to the cat and as undisturbed as possible. If there is a place that better fulfills these criteria, you should move it there. If not, just leave it where it is. The hallway still should be better than e.g. the living room where people spend more time. Potential suitable rooms would be a laundry room, an office (as long as it is not used to frequently by the sims, a guest bedroom etc).

Guest toilet: Guest toilets usually do not have showers or bath Tubs. Therefore, I would remove the shower. If you think that the family could accept leaving the door open whenever no sim is in the room, it could be a potential place for the litter box. Iff you think that they prefer to close the door, another place would be better.

Living room: The Schrankwand should be higher imho. They usually are higher than 2 m - like 2,20-2,30 m. As additional deco, you couldd have small bottles with fragrant scented oil and fragrance lamps. Bracelets made from certain gemstones (like this: https://cdn02.plentymarkets.com/803...dlos-19cm-0.jpg) also were popular although I think that they would fit better in the bedroom than in the living room. Maybe you can find a few bigger gemstones as deco? Scented candles also might be an option and if Margarete is interested in nature maybe also some dried herbs (like this: https://www.orodiparma.de/fileadmin...a275629305.jpg). As there already is an angel as decoration, you could add some putti/cherubs. If you think that Margarete is supersticious, she also could have a small pot with clover. They often are decorated with a miniature chimney sweep, pig and/or lady bird (like this: https://pflanzio.de/wp-content/uplo...uecksklee-1.jpg) and given as a small gift on New Year's Day to wish somebody luck. A horseshoe also would be an option if she is supersticious.

Entrance/hallway: You should remove the picture and instead have a clothes hanger for jackets.

OG hallway: It depends on what kind of deco you want to have. Is the table used to briefly put stuff that is supposed to be brought from one floor to another? Then you could place many things like used glasses, plates and empty bottles (that the children had in their rooms), sweets, snacks and full bottles (that the children will take in their bedrooms), bathroom cleaners (as the guest toilet on the ground floor has no storage), umbrellas and that kind of stuff. Do you want something permanent and decorative? Then you can use mirrors, paintings, photos, table lamps, vases with flowers, candle, small decorative boxes, souvenirs from vacations etc.

Parents' bedroom: On the nightstand, you could put a photo, some books and/or magazines, a small water bottle, a package of handkerchiefs (the most typical one in Germany: https://media.hygi.eu/22062/image/i...f1d57c3fa5fa3d), a pill blister, glasses (if one of them wears them during day time) etc.

Extra hallway: You could just repaint the white cabinet.

Bathroom: You definitely need more storage. The family would have a small stock of all the consumable products that are in the picture, more hand towels, bath towels, shaving supplies, make up, hair dryer, hair care products, skin care products, cleaning equipment (at least that that is needed for the bathroom itself) etc. I do not think that one additional cabinet would be enough for that. (Of course, you can assume that some of those things are stored in the extended hallway as there is more storage.)

Bookcase: There definitely should be more school supplies. Maybe you can move some of the books from the desk to the bookcase and use the space in the desk for the school supplies. There should be exercise books (like the ones on top of the desk) for every subject except for physical education - so definitely more than ten. He would also have ball pens, fineliners in several colours, text markers, pencils, rubber erasers, compasses, a triangle-shaped ruler (Geometriedreieck), gouache paint set and other arts supplies. I know that there already is some school stuff, but it should be more.

Cabinet: There should be much more clutter on all the shelves of the cabinet. As CDs still were really common back then, you should put stacks of CDs next to te stereo and fill the whole 4th shelf as well. There also should be more items on the 5th shelf and on the lowest two shelves, the piles should be higher. Maybe you also can find a few books that look less generic and more like hobby-related nonfictional books, literature books (we had to buy plenty for German and English classes) and/or like books that he might have gotten as present from relatives who do not know his hobbies too well. Maybe also google "Reclam Buch" as this publisher has specialized on printing books that are read at schools. They have a very plain look and therefore are cheaper than the same book by another publisher which is why they often are the first choice at school.

Floor clutter: I really like the cookie box and the packet of biskuits. I am not sure whether I like the bag next to the desk however. It looks like a handbag and not like a bag that someone like Thomas would use. A backpack would definitely be the better option and it should be big enough that the Din-A4-sized exercise books and the school books fit in there. On some days, 6-7 school books had to fit in it.

Posters: Maybe you should move all the posters with the babes closer to Thomas' bed ...
I also do not really like the look of the bed. Germans use other bedding than Americans. This is how a made bed looks like: https://media-cdn.holidaycheck.com/...0a-bb93e9181a9a and this is how an unmade bed (double bed in this case) could look like: https://image.schoener-wohnen.de/12...jpg--61932-.jpg
Even with the glitches due to two overlapping beds, the bedding looks too flat and not sloppy enough imho.
I would suggest using some EA bedding with plain color so that it will look like a bed sheet once you placed some additional bedding and pillows on top. The standard pillow size in Germany is 80x80 cm which is why I also would suggest placing additional pillows on top of the original ones (although I really do not like that pillow size in RL).

Sandra's bedroom: At her age, posters of horses might be a good option. As you already have a picture of a cat, you also could add some cat posters. If you find some Diddl posters, that might also be an option (as well as stuffed animals as deco). Diddl stuff had its peak in the early 2000s, but lost relevance around 2005. Boyband posters might also be an option at her age, but they lost relevance even sooner than Diddl so that this might not be the right time period for your Veronaville.

Bookcase: I would rather have a higher bookshelf instead of a wider one and use the second tipe for an additional cabinet.

DG hallway: I would suggest made-to-measure cabinets like this: https://schreinerei-selig.de/wp-con...--schrank-2.jpg

Board game table: I do not really like EA's approach on those game tables. In RL you use a normal dining table or coffee table and put the game back into its box afterwards. That is why they look out of place everywhere imho.

DG spare room: Guest room definitely would be an option. I do not think that the room would be a good Atelier was rooms beneath the roof often are a bit dark. The room just has one window. Even if it provides good light, it would only be for a few hours per day at maximum and those few hours are not necessarily at that time when your sims have time to paint. I do not know much about Reiki, but that also seems to be an option. A quick Google search showed that as an alternative to Reiki tables, there also are Reiki beds on floor level. Maybe that is an option to combine the Reiki room and guest room ideas in one concept? If you find cabinets like I suggesed for the hallway, you maybe can use them to hide some of the mods behind them.

DG hobby/storage room: In a storage, all stored stuff should be in boxes, cabinets, plastic bags or something like that. Otherwise the stuff will be covered in dust very soon. Skies usually are stored upright, not lying flat. Maybe some kind of OMSP can help with that?
I would rather place deco on the sideboards that is connected to the hobby part of the room. As there is fitness equipment, you also could use the dumbbells from Thomas' bedroom. If you have a kettlebell, you also could place that. In addition to that, I would place some full and maybe also an empty water bottle and towels. For the music instruments, you maybe could place some plectrums, replacement chords, guitar bags and a guitar tuner. Maybe you also can find some recording equipment. If you do, you also could place CDs there.

Dormer: As the dormer most likely was added at a later point, I am not sure whether it should be half-timbered at all as there are very few people who still know how to build half-timered structures. Many dormers therefore were built with other materials. Moreover, half-timbered structures do not necessarily have to be visible. In most houses that I know, they are covered up and look like any other wall. Exceptions usually are design choices for important rooms like living rooms and in those cases often the compartments between the beams are removed to create a more open layout. As I do not think that people would do this for a storage room, I would change the wall of the dormer, not the wall of the rest of the room.



Headcanons

Church: In small villages, regular church goers usually always sit on the same seat or at least in the same bench. Therefore, I would assume that the Capps and Montys sit in different areas of the church and simply ignore each other. There definitely should be more than just one bench distance as there is a moment during church service when people are supposed to shake hands with the people close to them and they would want to avoid this.
A gothic style does not necessarily mean that people are against church. I knew quite a few people for whom it just was a fashion and music choice without deeper meaning.
Nevertheless, the percentage of teenagers who really believe in god and want to go to church because of that is quite low (we once did a poll in religious education class and even there less than 10 % of people said that they believe in god). In the majority of cases, teenagers are urged by other family members.

Hermia could show her desinterest in paranormality by trying to debunk conspiration theories (like ancient astronauts) that already existed back then. She also could refuse to do any of the little actions and use any phrase that originates from supersticion (like the clover that I suggested for the Tellier family, wishing somebody "toi toi toi" etc).

As mentioned above, only very few teenagers really believe in god. Maybe Hermia is more interested in the church as an old building than in the institution. The people interested in goth/metal culture that I know were not really interested in religion. A few of them sometimes made jokes about liking the evil, but those were just jokes without any influence on their behaviour. I assume that Consort would urge Hermia and her siblings to go to church at least for special events to protect his reputation. And I think that Hermia and her siblings will comply as long as it is just for special events and they do not have to go to church every week as otherwise they might spend more time discussing with Consort than the church service would take.

I do not really agree with your interpretation that low interest in paranormal means that a sim most likely is religious. A god that created the world definitely would qualify as paranormal for me. The low paranormal interest of those sims therefore for me is not really a reason why they would be regular churchgoers. As mentioned in one of my previous postings, I could imagine that Consort and/or other adult family members are part of the parish council. That simply could be their way to have some influence in the village. Patrizio Monty could be a regular churchgoer because he is used to it since he was a child and never questioned it (I guess that this applies to many villagers nowadays because very few really believe in genesis and other important aspects of Christianity). This also could apply to Bianca. Nevertheless, for her I also could imagine that she liked/likes being part o the rural youth and rural woman's associations that usually are connected to the church and parish.

TS4 premades: Paulo is a Portuguese version of that name. The Italian version is Paolo. And yes, that is a name that could be used for a 3rd generation child. Sergio is less likely to be used as there is no (obvious) German counterpart to that name.



Build/Buy

Magazines: They usually have a slightly different ratio than Din A4, but the vast majority of magazines has the same or a very similar ratio to each other. There are a few exceptions where you will notice the different size and ratio at first glance, but right now I can mainly think of political magazines that like to stick out that way. Teenage magazines, sports magazines, horse magazines etc. which usually would be the source for posters are rather not the kind of magazines that are willing to spend additional money for print costs (that definitely are higher for unusual formats). While there might be some deviances, they should not be so big that you can notice the different ratios just by looking at a picture of the room.

Fireplace tools: They all look fine to me. If you do not have performance problems, you can keep all of them. If you really have to get rid of some of them, I would chose 1 and 5 as I think that metal handles are more common than wooden ones, but I did not do a search to verify this.

Gravestones: Most graveyards that I know have (mainly) double graves so that gravestones should be two tiles wide. Those graves are family graves with space for two coffins on top off each other on each side so that four people can be buried within one interment period. Gravestones often also have the names of all buried family members (often including the ones who died long before the current interment period) with year of birth and death on them which means that they have to have a certain size to fit the amount of text. However, gravestone styles can vary a lot. I also know a graveyard where every single grave has an identical big wooden cross with a roof as weather protection. Therefore, I do not really want to suggest you which ones to remove, but if you want to remove some, check which ones would look good if you place them in the middle of two tiles and which ones have sufficient space for the data of a few sims.

Basement: Mementos of glory (although you also could place it in the living room or bedroom), unbeatable stains, big box of irreplaceably replaceable things, shabby cardboard box, the travelers trunk and unmatched chairs. The moving buddy might be an option for garages.

Antique furniture: The three ones on the left definitely do not look antique. I also would exclude the one on the right due to the unnatural color. The remaining two one look to plain for a Frankfurter Schrank imho. However, there are a few antique dressers that look similar. Thus, as long as you do not have better ones, use them - although maybe not for the Capps as they most likely would want more expensive antique furniture.

Facebook group: Can you please provide me with pictures? I do not have a Facebook account and therefore cannot see the pictures on Facebook.

FWH in 20th century: "Rebuilt" and "reconstruction" sounds like you think the FWH were built from scratch at that time. That is not possible because there simply were not enough experienced craftsmen anymore to build a bigger number of FWHs in a short period of time. And they definitely were busy enough repairing the existing, damaged houses. Those repairs often were extensive like redoing the whole roof, but if damages exceeded a certain level, it was the better option to buiild a whole new house.
The decline of FWH building style already started in the 19th century. Nevertheless, this means that some craftsmen who started working at the end of the 19th century, still were working in the 1920s, but definitely not working anymore in 1945 and the following years.
Moreover, the vast majority of houseowners did not want to build FWHs anymore at that time. They already were out of fashion for many decades. With the better train connections in rural areas, it also was easier to transport bricks and other building materials wherever they were needed. FWHs also were not up to date regarding aspects like running water, warm water and central heating. Building regulations also were more aligned with the requirements of other house types which had the consequence that FWH were not (significantly) cheaper than solid houses anymore and in some cases even were more expensive to construct.
Please also keep in mind that for FWHs, you cannot use recently felled trees for the beams. They need quite a bit of time to become dryer so that the beams do not change their form and stability anymore after the construction and to avoid mold. This was an additional factor that limited how many new houses could be build in a short period of time - especially as one new house would have required a number of beams that otherwise could have been used to repair several damaged houses. As Germany needed as much additional housing space as possible in a short period of time, repairs were drastically favored over newly built houses as less material was needed.

Build/buy
Tellier: the references houses I used for dormer inspiration, were actually built/extended with half-timbered dormers (especially in Bergisches Land and Sauerland), but I won't rule out that the timbering could be a decorative facade instead.
Examples:
* https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste...ehl_Schul_6.JPG
* https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...sHaus1-Bubo.JPG
* https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste...str6-1-Asio.JPG
* https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/27/c3/5f...ef65ebebea5.jpg
* https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c0/da/fc/...6ef9478fb73.jpg
* https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...asse64Haus2.jpg
* https://i.pinimg.com/736x/3c/4f/9b/...9f6a1bb7970.jpg

I also heard that some FWH have interchangeably parallel and tangent beams, but it could be a regional thing.

For what kinds of households is Biedermeierstil furniture suited? https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biedermeier

I found this advertisement during my search for villa inspiration to place in Veronaville (the reference village also has a few fancy houses irl). I wonder, would those kinds of cabinets and dining chairs suit for the Capp mansion?

Tellier
Cat pics: https://imgur.com/a/bmiEpP9
The household has a white-tabby female cat (Mischling/Hauskatze) and I named her Minka (I used ChatGPT for female cat German name ideas, so better name suggestions are welcome). The kids have the highest interest in Animals.
Given Margarete is a Neat Sim with a moderate interest in Animals, how likely would the cat be allowed to visit the OG and the DG, in particular the child bedrooms?

Build/Buy

FWH
If the linked buildings are protected monuments, the authorities may specify how the facade looks like. As I am not an expert, I cannot tell you which ones are faked and which ones are real (if any), but if you have a look at the beams, the dormer beams are quite straight while some of the non-dormer beams are slightly curved. Unless the dormers all are very recent additions, it seems to be quite unlikely that none of the dormer beams is slightly curved a bit by now.

In one of my very old postings, I linked an article about beam directions. If I remember correctly, there are some basic rules on beam directions for statical reasons, but there might be different approaches. As different regions have different typical house layouts, they also should have at least slightly different typical beam arrangements. In some regions, some of the beams also are decoratively shaped. Some of those beams might be purely aesthetic and not needed for static reasons.

As I do not remember whether I already suggested this to you: You could look up some German Freilandmuseen. A Freilandmuseum is a museum that collect old buildings that are worth being preserved and reconstruct them on the museum grounds (the original houses, not replicas). They usually have a variety of houses from different periods and regions with original layouts and typical furniture. If some of those museums have lots of photos on their websites, that could be a good addition to the real estate websites.

Biedermeier
Biedermeier furniture usually is antique. Therefore, it is only suited for rich households and amongst the rich households for those that care about having a representative house and for whom the appearance is more important than the functionality/comfort as many antique furniture pieces are not that comfortable.

Remscheid Villa
Of the pieces that you mentioned, only the credenza/Anrichte in the corner looks like a good choice to me. Of the things you did not ask for, I really like the entrance door (and it has to look authentically as the building is protected) and the living room furniture of the living room that is shown on the third picture after the kitchen picture.


Tellier

Minka as a name for a cat is fine.

I think that it does not matter at all how neat Margarete is. As long as the upper floors of the house are not closed off with a door, the cat will go there. And if there is a closed door and the cat wants to go through that door, it is very likely that it will start scratching the wall next to the door to signalize this. I am quite sure that Margarete will care more about damaged wallpapers than about having cat hair everywhere as the first requires a renovation to fix it while the latter "only" requires regular deep cleaning.

Build/Buy
I recall your beam direction findings, hence I was surprised to learn that beam directions could be variable in a Bergisches Haus. I will look for Freilichtmuseen at the SL and BL regions. Perhaps I can visit one in one of my future NRW weekend trips (I really enjoy BL irl!)

Yeah, I liked the entrance door of that Bergisches villa too. Sadly, there are limited options for antique 2-tile door CCs . Veranka's 3t2 Mutske Thorpe is the closest I could get: https://veranka-downloads.tumblr.co...-4-thorpe-build

When I look for Immo pics of (older) houses in NRW, I really often see a shower in the EG guest toilet (yes, even in that Bergisches Villa Immo ad).

Would the Capps be that kind of rich Sims who would own Biedermeierstil furniture?

Since I unfortunately never had drawing class, I wonder, what other art supplies did pupils usually had at home? Here's an art supply set by Nixy

Tellier
December screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/ts2-telliers-bu...of-2024-JWSHWcv
Last month, I've updated the object placements based on your feedback. My questions are included in the Imgur captions.

If outgoing teenagers, like Thomas, want to have digital contact their friends while they're at home, would they likely to do it through ICQ on PC, or rather by calling or SMS texting?
(For reference: in my country, digital contact was mostly done by calling/texting or chatting through MSN on PC. Our phone plan tiers consisted of limited number of phone hours and SMS texts, whilst we already had cable internet.)

Sorry for the long absence. I had the flu.


Build/Buy

Beams
I guess by "variable" they meant that there is more than one option that works, but not that the beams could be placed completely randomly or not being used at all. That applies for all FWH, not only for those in Bergisches Land.

Doors
The door in the link does not really look like a typical FWH door. I would rather use a plain wooden one instead if you do not have any more authentic doors. And for some doors, especially rather plain ones, it works quite well to place two doors next to each other to create the impression of a double door. I would always lock one door for all sims so that it cannot open in the wrong direction. For residential lots, doors open to the inside of the building, for community lots, doors open to the outside of the building.

Shower in EG
That is not too unusual. It is always better to have more than one full bath, even if you hardly ever need the second shower.
I assume that those EG bathrooms were the first bathrooms of the house and the upper floor bathrooms were added at a later date. By the time showers/bathtubs with water supply became popular in regular houses/apartments, they usually were installed very close to the kitchen or even in the kitchen as that was the best-heated part of the house/apartment and only short water tubes were needed. (Also bathtubs without water supply usually had been placed in the kitchen when needed.) At that time, toilets usually were outside or in the unheated staircase of an apartment building. Bathrooms close to the bedrooms also only became more common at a later point, when it was more common to have water tubes leading to more than just one room of the house and when people started heating the whole house or at least more parts of it than before. Toilets then were added to the bathrooms inside the house/apartment at a later point, although I know people who still had their toilet in a completely unheated subsidiary building around 2005. The entrance to that building was just about 2 m away from the house entrance, but you still had to go outside all year long and as the door was opened relatively frequently, lots of cold air got inside in winter.
If you want more information, search for Frankfurter Bad as this was the place where this became popular first.

Biedermeier for Capps
The optics might work well for them, but I am not sure whether they really would be into the associations with that style. Politically, there was a period of restauration after the Vienna Congress when monarchy and nobility wanted to ensure that they had the sole political power in future, suppress democratic ideas and the demand for a constitution.
The Biedermeier style is the style of those people who focused on their private lives during that period. There also was a movement called Vormärz opposing the restauration and leading up to the events in March 1848. Vormärz supporters were in favour of more liberties and rights for citizens, democracy, constitutions etc. While it was mainly a political movement, it also influenced art although with more focus on literature and to a lesser extent painting.
Thus, you have to decide whether your Capp ancestors were rather on the Biedermeier or Vormärz side and if you choose the Biedermeier side, you also have to decide, whether the current Capps are so happy about this that they want to show it by having that kind of furniture. I assume that many of the other Veronaville inhabitants do not have enough knowledge about those furniture items, but those who do would comprise many of the people whose opinion would be relevant to Consort, like business partners.

Arts supplies
Pencils (small set) and erasers could be used by every pupil for geometry as part of the maths lessons. Pastels and pencils (big set) could be used by any primary school child, the bottom left item of the pencils (big set) also for teenagers (although the typical packaging in Germany looks different: https://prod-metro-markets.imgix.ne...FFFFF&fit=fill). Water color tray paint is a typical arts supply that you need in school. Typical trays have twelve round inserts for colors without an extra box for brushes, more expensive ones have twentyfour colors in two trays that are connected by some sort of joint. (https://www.officept.com/media/imag...12700720634.jpg)
The sketch book could be used by sims with a high interest/enthusiasm in arts for drawing during other classes.
We never used palettes, drawing boards or watercolor tube paint. Oil/acrylic tube paint would be something that just had to be bought for a certain project in arts classes, but only be used for a limited period of time. Brushes in the sizes as shown also were not needed. For the brushes it depends on how big they really are ingame. If they are significantly bigger than the brush in the watercolor tray, they are too big.
We also had painting blocks with A3 or even A2 as size. As they are really big and do not fit a regular backpack, I wonder whether we could leave them at school. Scissors, small glue bottles, china ink bottles and a "Geodreieck" (also used in maths classes) also were supplies that we often needed.
Arts classes were not only limited to painting. We made pottery, created miniature scenarios in shoeboxes, made candles, different kinds of prints, made papier mâché sculptures, did technical drawings etc. In primary school, we also had needlework and industrial arts. Special supplies for those kinds of projects where needed every now and then and almost always there were some kind of left-overs at the end of the project.



Tellier

Thomas' bedroom
The desk somehow is not cluttered enough imho. You still can see so much of the wooden texture of it. Is any other of the school-related items suitable for stacking or big enough that OMSPs would not be too much work?
I also would move most of the school related stuff on the desk and most of the food- and drink-related items on the floor instead. It can be quite uncomfortable to do homework on the floor while it is not a problem to grab a bottle or bag of snacks when you want to drink/eat from it and put it back down afterwards.
Do you have recolors for the Tetrapaks? It looks like one for milk and that would be a relatively unusual drink choice for a teenager and milk is usually kept in the fridge. With other colors, it might look like a juice Tetrapak which is more common as a drink - also as "Schorle" mixed with water or to mix it with alcohol.
The waste bin beneath the desk should not be empty.
The bookcase looks better, but still a bit empty. The lowest shelf looks nice. Maybe you also can place some of the CD boxes in a similar way so that they look more cluttered?
I wonder whether people really would hang a skateboard on a wall above their bed as it might fall down. If there is another place where you could put it, it might be better to move it. If there is no other suitable place, keep it where it is.
The heater looks really misplaced and wrong at its current location. If you want to keep it on that wall, you should move the bed a bit away to make space for the heater and center the heater beneath the window. You also could move it beneath the other window where the small shelf currently is located. You could move that shelf just a bit away from the wall (although it is recommended to avoid that) or rearrange the small shelf and the dresser to make sufficient space for the heater.

Sandra's bedroom
The room lacks a high dresser imho. Therefore, I would either remove the small drawer cabinet or the endtable. If you remove the drawer cabinet, you can put the deco from there on the lower shelf of the endtable. The high dresser should be put in the corner and the bookcase where the drawer cabinet is right now as the dresser most likely will be deeper than the bookcase.
The rocket decoration sticks out a bit imho as there is no otheer space-themed decoration there. As Sandra seems to have plenty of other interests, I would replace it.
The globe is a good choice imho, but I do not think that this side of the desk is the best location for it as it limits the space that Sandra has for her exercise books and school books. The cup with pencils and scissors also should be placed somewhere else.

Parents' bedroom
Endtables: IIRC I made some more suggestions in a previous posting. I think pill blisters were something that I suggested. Eye mask and night cream might be new ideas. For the person with glasses, you also might add a small container for contacts and a bottle that looks like it could contain a cleaning agent for contacts.
Each of them should have a lamp. It does not matter whether they are table lamps or wall lamps.
The armoires look nice and you can keep them, but a built-in closet also would work. In real life, people might choose a custom-made dresser (regardless of whether it is an armoire or built-in closet) as chances are not that good to find a ready-made one with exactly the perfect sizes. In a FWH, this might be especially problematic as most likely not even the walls are really straight.

Bathroom
Do you have the toothbrushs in several colors? If they all have the same color, they can be confused easily. I also would move the deco from the front of the sink further to the back as it might be fall down easily otherwise. The electric shaver and the hairdryer on the washiing machine maybe also should not lie around openly as it could be damaged by high humidity when somebody takes a bath/shower.
You can place more shampoos and shower gels on the shelf above the bathtub. Usually there are more shampoos and shower gels than inhabitants. Are the brushes make-up brushes (because of the kohl pencil) or shaving brushes? If it is the first option, you also could place some make-up on the sink.
You also could place more laundry detergents on the washing machine: for colored clothing, white clothing, black clothing, maybe one for wool clothing, descaling agent etc.
Handtowels should be next to the sink, not on the opposing wall and there should be one hand towel and one bath towel per inhabitant (unless they usually use another bathroom).
There also should be one or more outlets in the bathroom (in addition to the one for the heater) - especially as there are electric tooth brushes, a hair dryer and an electric shaver. In bathrooms, outlets usually have some sort of cover so that the humidity cannot get inside (like this: https://www.steckdosenleiste.org/wp...r-steckdose.jpg)
You also might put an outlet with a cable somewhere next to the washing machine and a water connection also would be a good idea, if you have such CC.
The placement of the upper cabinet is strange and it also looks too deep - more like an upper cabinet for a kitchen, not a bathroom. Most typical place for an upper cabinet would be above the sink (usually including a mirror), above the washing machine also might work, but not in your case due to the window. In some places, I have also seen something above the toilet, but that usually is just one or two open shelves, not a closed cabinet.
The laundry bin looks really nice and very typical.

Storage cabinet
Definitely move the hairdryer and electric shaver there for the time when they are not used. In addition to that, you could place one backup of each shampoo and shower gel, maybe several ones if the family likes to buy products with bargain prices, a backup soap bottle, body lotion, hand cream, face cream, make-up (unless you place everything at the sink), aftershave, towels of different sizes so that they look like hand towels and bath towels, tiny guest towels, facecloths, perfume etc.

Hobby room
Is there anything that you can do about the color of the roof pitch?
I am not really convinced by the skies. The size looks off, they have no bindings, why are they hanging on a wall, especially without any visible mounting, where are the skiing boots, the ski sticks, the bags that will be used for transportation?

EG office
I would move the printer to one of the lower shelves of the desk so that the user can reach it without having to stand up. Instead the folder could be moved up or the printer could be moved behind the phone.
The black folder on top of the desk shelf is clipping.
Who will use the computer? If the parents will use it, you can put more folders and documents there, maybe a few less colorful CDs that could be for tax filing software and the like. If Thomas uses it, plenty of CDs with computergames, maybe also a partially consumed bottle and/or snack, a school book/exercise book if he has to reseach something for school. If Sandra uses it, I would not add anything as I assume that she may not yet use it alone and if she likes to play computer games she would play some of the more age-appropriate ones that her brother owns.
I think that mouse pads still were a thing back then. The mouse also should have a wire. Maybe you also want to replace the flatscreen monitor with a CRT one. 2006 was the first year when more flatscreen monitors than CRT monitors were sold and most people continued to use the CRT monitors for a while.
The waste bin is empty.

EG hallway
The bedrooms definitely are a better place for the backpacks as they have to take out a lot of stuff to do their homework and it is easier to carry around the backpack than its content separately. Sandras backpack looks too small imho. It should at least be big enough that a Diercke Weltatlas fits into it.
Thomas backpack has Schalke 04 branding. As German football fans are very loyal to their club, the posters and merchandise in his bedroom also should have the same club colors (plus maybe a few items related to the national team and/or his own club if he plays actively).
I do not like the shoe decoration. I assume that they were extracted from some outfits and have exactly the right size for the respective sims, but that is because sims apparently have much smaller feet than humans. I made some calculations because I was not sure whether the shoes really are too small, but apparently, sims shoes/feet only are about 60 % (Sandra's) to 70 % (the other three) of the length of human feet. (Given the length of a bed is 2 m and 42, 39 and 36 as average shoe sizes for German men, women and 10 year old girls). Especially the combination of Thomas backpack (which is the size that Sandra's backpack also should have) and Sandra's shoes looks really out of proportion. This will not be a problem anymore once you move the backpacks to their bedrooms, but just keep the size of the shoes in mind when you combine them with other decorations.

Thank you for the feedback! I hope you recovered well.

Tellier

OG: The tetrapack + paper clutter is a 4t2 conversion, so custom recolors are usually unlikely. The toothbrush recolors were donation-only, so I or someone else have to make recolors. There are outlet CCs available, but for the sake of ease I leave them out everywhere . The bathroom upper cabinet is from kitchen CC deco indeed, and I'm not sure if I have or can find shallow wall cabinets with a similar basic mesh, so in that case I choose for replacing it with shelves above the toilet.

DG: I cannot do that much about the color of the roof ceiling, as it will also affect the exterior of the roof pitch. And making roof retextures is quite complicated due to its unclear mapping. The ski CCs were meshed like this, and I have to find more wintersports CCs if available.

EG: I imagine the PC is used by everyone. I have some office CCs, including standing folders. Thomas and Sandra also own a game console (a Gamecube) in the living room, so they can rotate with gaming devices. I will replace the PC with a CRT one, but Maxis left out the wires of the mouse due to animation. I have to check if I can find a mousepad deco. It would make sense that the shoes are adjusted to Sim-sized feet, so I leave it as Sim sizes. I still have to make a recolor to replace the Schalke retexture of the backpack. If I move the backpacks to their bedrooms, what other deco can I put on the hallway sideboard instead?

Storytelling: would teenagers like Thomas use SMS, calling or rather ICQ to communicate digitally with their friends? And how would pre-teens like Sandra communicate with their friends digitally, assuming owning a cellphone was not yet common at a younger age?

OG
Shelves instead of the kitchen cabinet sounds like a good solution.

DG
My main problem is that the roof ceiling and the regular ceiling have different colors as the ceiling typically has one color. If it is too difficult to change the roof ceiling, it might be an option to change the color of the reglar ceiling to match the roof ceiling.

EG - PC
Is there a special reason why you chose a Gamecube? Around 2004, the PS2 was by far the most common console in Germany and Xboxes also were more common than Gamecubes.

EG - Hallway sideboard
You could put some keys there, purses, jackets if there is no other designated place or a household member is sloppy, outfit accessories like gloves, scarves, hats, basecaps, sunglasses etc., maybe a shopping basket - pretty much anything that people would take before leaving the house and/or take off/put down when they arrive back home.

Storytelling - Thomas
ICQ most likely would be the preferred way of communication while he is at home. Mobile phone contracts back then typically had a certain amount of SMS included, but additional ones were relatively expensive so he would like to save those for the times when he is not at home. The same is true for making calls with his mobile phones although his free minutes might be even more limited by only being usable when calling people who have the same provider. And landline phones back then often were at a central place in the house and connected to the wall with a wire which means that other household members could listen if they wanted to.

Storytelling - Sandra
Would she communicate digitally at all at that age? At that age, we still met in person quite frequently and for children of the same village, it was sufficient to agree on a certain time and a place to meet (your house, their house, the local playground etc). Usually this was done in school, sometimes by having a short landline phone call. For children from other villages/towns, the parents of at least one child had to be involved as a car driver and that usually would be done by talking to the other child in person or by talking to them and/or their parents on the landline phone.

Tellier
The Gamecube was a random choice. I also have PS2 CC. I was quite young when I communicated digitally (already at 6th grade).
What cars would suit the parents if they own two cars? For Margarete, I was thinking of a small car anyhow.

Build/Buy
for what kind of households would suit each of these cars:
1970s Volkswagen Golf
1980s Audi
2000s Audi
2000s Mercedez Benz
1980s Mercedes Benz
2000s BMW X5, Z3
2000s Porsche
2000s Opel Corsa
late 1990s Saab
1990s Volvo 850
1990s Renault Clio

Simming journey
Due to circumstancs, I haven't been that much active with Simming and making new builds lately, hence my shorter replies.

Tellier

Console: There is no real "right" or "wrong" for a single household. For the neighborhood in total, I would try to have percentages similar to the real ones.

Sandra: As she still is a child, I thought that she is at the very beginning of secondary school. Pupils usually turn 13 somewhen during 6th grade so that teenager definitely is the more appropriate life stage for this gade, especially considering how much longer the teenage stage is compared to the child stage.
At the beginning of secondary school, the friends your own village from kindergarten and primary school still are the main friends and you easily can arrange a meeting in the afternoon by talking on the school bus on the way home. Due to the split school system, pupils also meet a lot of new pupils in 5th grade, but it will take a bit of time to build up friendships with them so that the need for additional communication after school is not yet as big as it will be a few years later. At the time of your Veronaville, not everybody had internet at home yet (internet via 56k modems was available everywhere, but DSL and flatrate contracts had limited availability, especially in rural areas, and people often had to wait until additional cables were laid before they could get a DSL contract). Also there were many recommendations that parents should not let their children (at least at this age) be online unsupervised. Therefore, while Sandra has internet access, not everyone of her friends would have internet access as well and for those that do, chances are high that Sandra's and/or the friend's parents would sit next to them making chatting less attractive.
(I had my first email address when I was 10 years old and started using messengers, playing browser games etc. a bit later, but that was on computers in the town library during breaks at school. When we started having internet at home a few years later, my parents wanted to know what I do online, nevertheless.)

Cars: From the list beneath, the Corsa and Clio could be good choices for the small car. For the bigger car, families with children often have vans or estate cars/station wagons.


Build/Buy

This is difficult to answer. About 2/3 of newly registered cars in Germany belong to companies where employees might have some influence, but definitely not a completely free choice which car it will be. Of the 1/3 newly registered cars that belong to private people, about 80 % are bought from people 40+ years (40 % alone between 50 and 64 years), 70 % are bought by men. Thus, a relatively small group of people chooses the majority of cars in Germany and the majority of people who buys used cars has to choose from whatever is available at the time of their purchase.

70s Golf: As of 2023, there were less than 44 000 registered Golf 1 left while there are about 70 million registered cars in Germany. So the most probable answer is that there probably should not be any in your Veronaville at all. If you want to include one, it could belong to a car enthusiast and collector or an old man who barely drives car at all (although that is difficult in a rural area because you need a car for almost all errands) or a messie household that has some old and unused vehicles in the backyard.

80s/00s Audi, 80s/00s Mercedes: That is too generic to really be able to answer. In 2005, Audi A4/80, A6, A3 and A2 (sorted in descending order) were in the top 100 of registered cars, but with no specific information on the model ranges. The same applies for Mercedes C, E, A class, 190, CLK, SLK, Vito/Viano, S and ML class. Audi 80 B3 and Mercedes 190 E are the models that I remember best from my childhood/adolescence as there were a few families who had them as main cars for as long as I can remember (I think at least two of them still might be owned by the same families today).

BMW X5: Not in the top 100 and not common in the area where I grew up at all. SUVs were not that popular back then. As family cars, people prefer(red) estate cars/station wagons and vans. For rare ocasions where you really need all-wheel-drive and/or high tensile force, in a village there a still quite a few families who have an old tractor that can do a better job. Even if your family does not own one, a friend of yours most likely does and it does not require an additional driving license if you have a one for cars. Even in villages there are very few people who need all-wheel-drive regularly and those usually have older and cheaper SUVs where it would not be a drama if it is a bit dented.

BMW Z3: I only know one person who had one. It was the son of a company owner. He got it second-hand as present for his 18th birthday. It previously belonged to his stepmom who then got another, new car by her husband. Place 98 of the top 100 with around 67 000 registered cars in 2005.

00s Posche and 90s Saab: Also too generic. Not a single model of either brand is in the top 100.

Corsa and Clio: Typical second smaller car for families with two cars, also a good choice for novice drivers as these cars have relatively low insurance costs and purchase prices as used cars also are affordable. Corsas were about three times as common as Clios (regardless of model range). For the novice drivers, I would suggest older cars, for the families with a second car, it could be either decade depending on their financial situation.

Volvo 850: Not in the top 100. The only Volvo models in the top 100 are 40 and 70 (without specifying if it is the S or V version or both combined). I remember a seeing a few Volvo estate cars/station wagons back then, but Volvos were not really common.

Here is the link to the top 100 list that I quoted several times: https://www.kfz-auskunft.de/kfz/pkw_bestand_2005.html

As more than half of the people change from one car brand to another when purchasing a new used car, I do not want to specify perfect owners for certain car models. In the vast majority of cases, you just should have a look at the households finances, family size, special requirements for hobbies and work and figure out whether the household members care more about status symbols or saving money and you will end up with several options that all are plausible for that household.
A few things that might influence the choice: Company owners can get tax deductions for their company cars (that they also may use privately). Therefore, they tend to buy a bit more expensive cars and replace them more frequently than an employee with a similar income. Amongst shift workers in factories, certain BMW and Mercedes models are much more popular than amongst the average of people with such an income. State officials in my environment, in constrast, spent less money on cars than you would expect - e.g. by driving the same car for more than 20 years or commuting by bicycle. Another factor might be whether you will have a car dealership in your neighborhood. The owner and employees usually should be entitled to bigger discounts when buying cars from that brand which obviously could influence their choice. People with such connections also tend to buying new cars every few years. Friends of the car dealership owner might also have cars of that brand as they would also receive bigger discounts than usual.


Simming Journey
No pressure. It is a game, not an obligation. And I am often not really quick in responding to your postings. Fewer questions means that I need less time to prepare my posting and therefore can answer a bit sooner than otherwise.

Tellier
13 year is for me the cutoff between Child and Teen. I imagine Sandra being 10 years old (becoming 11 at end of school year), hence I assumed she would be in 5th grade, i.e. first year of secondary school. Since they only have one PC, it's often occupied anyhow.
(I was 10 when I was in my equivalent of 5th grade and already had internet access at home, so I could download CCs for TS1 . I had my computer in the EG so my parents could also supervise my internet behavior)

Potential Windenburg Lot references for households
For the Rosa ( https://imgur.com/nUN102C ) household, how likely would they live in this kind of house? It's built in the late 60s, but reconstructed in the late 80s. It's living area is 180 m² with 5 bedrooms.

Would this house (2nd pic) suit for the LeChien ( https://imgur.com/rEpxmsj ) household? Built in the late 50s, living space of 140 m², 4 bedrooms (of which 3 in DG) and a big plot size of 1590 m².

Baumann-Tomic household: new Windenburg build
https://imgur.com/a/ts2-baumann-tom...-apr-25-l5W6Bn0
I decided to let Nikolas stay with his mother in their pre-war multi-gen/ZFH, which I recently have build. I used ChatGPT to get suggestions for interior deco based on their personality and interests. Questions are included in the captions, but I also made remarks of what I'm aware of, or I could modify myself.

Tellier

You are right about 10-11 years for 5th grade, I was wrong by one year. As you imagine Sandra being in 5th grade, the information about the new class mates etc. definititely applies.
We did have a computer with office software, but without internet at home when I was 10 years old. It was not a big problem, as I used the library computers regularly.


Windenburg Lots

Rosa family
Financially, the house definitely should be affordable for them, but I am not sure how interested they would be in such a house. Do you have floorplans of the house? I know quite a few houses in a similar style where each floor has all the rooms that you would expect in an apartment (= also multiple kitchens). In the houses that I know the different living areas usually are not completely separated from each other as the staircase typically is in the hallway in the middle of the house. These houses often are inhabited by three generations of one family where the older generation has the ground floor and the younger generation has the upper floors. Thus, not a real granny flat, but not really living together either. The other point that might make the house less interesting for the family is the date of the last bigger renovation. I do not think that the family already owned the house since the late 80s and it seems unlikely to me that they would move into a newly purchased house without doing bigger renovations as their preferred style will be different from that of the previous owners and some modernizations also might have been necessary. But if you rebuilt the house ingame, you could move the date of those renovations to the time when the family bought the house.

LeChien
This house has a lower price than the first one, but the family income is also significantly lower. The family information does not specify what level Clémont has in his career. In Germany, the jobs for state officials are grouped depending on the level of education. There is einfacher, mittlerer, gehobener and höherer Dienst depending on whether a Hauptschulabschluss, Mittlere Reife, Abitur or a university degree is required as prerequisit for employment. State officials usually can only progress within their own group which limits the income for the lower groups. If he is in the Gehobenen Dienst (= has Abitur (equivalent) and studied as part of his Ausbildung at the police), they should be able to afford the house, but the family would not have a lot of money left for luxury. If they have to make a bigger purchase like a used car, they would not have enough money for a real vacation the same year. If he is in Mittlerer Dienst, money would be really tight so that vacations pretty much never would be possible and any kind of bigger purchase would be problematic.
The main factor for this is the health insurance constellation in the family. State officials are insured in a private health insurance and every family member has to be insured separately. For this, the state pays a certain percentage of the insurance and a bonus that can be used to cover another insurance that pays those amounts that the first insurance does not pay. For the children the state contribution to the health insurance and the bonus will approximately cover all the costs. For the wife, the contribution percentage is lower and the costs for the additional insurance is higher so that she has to pay a few hundred euros per month herself - probably the amount of money that she earns with her Minijob. If she really wants to contribute something to the household income, she should have more than just a Minijob. Considering the common salaries in culinary jobs back then, she even could work fulltime and still get the state contribution for her health insurance because her own income is low enough. She does not necessarily have to work fulltime, but it should be more than just "sometimes helping". Then they definitely could afford the house, regardless of whether Clémont is in Mittlerer or Gehobener Dienst.

Baumann

Cars: Two might be enough. Many elder woman did not have driving licenses back then. As I found the family information further down: With the additional information, I definitely would go for two cars. Gertrud most likely would not have a driving license due to her year of birth. Nikolas and Danijela both need a car because their working hours sometimes will overlap and they also will have to drive the children to certain activities (friends, hobbies) regularly. As they do not have a high income, both should have older cars. The bigger car should max. be the size of a Ford Escort or an Opel Astra, the smaller car could be one with just three doors like a Fiat Panda or Citroen Saxo.

Clothing line: I think rotary clothing dryers are more common than just regular clothing lines. You can find a picture here: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/..._lgPaI&usqp=CAU When they are not used, they can be folded together and you can put some kind of waterproof protection on it.

Hot spring pool: What about a paddling pool? There definitely should be CC ones out there, although most likely non-functional ones.

Pottery: I think that this is something that you would rather do in the regular house, not in a garden house.
Health insurance: Due to his job, Nikolas is in the public health insurance and therefore his wife and children are automatically insured without additional costs. Therefore, Danijela could have a Minijob without the problems of the LeChien family.

Katarina: Culinary is not a good paying career in Germany. If she works in the service, she might make a bit more money due to tips, but Germany does not have a big tipping culture and in a German restaurant in a rural area, I assume that the tips are below average as well. Therefore, I would assume that she has a small apartment, possibly even a studio apartment although those might not be that common in rural areas. The maximum would be two rooms, but in that case they both would have to be small. I could imagine that she lives in one of the towns, not a village, but also that she lives close to the restaurant where she works (you do not mention where it is located). If the restaurant is in one of the towns, it might be easier for her financially as she then might be okay without a car of her own, but she would depend on help from her friends, affairs and family for those ocasions when she really needs a car.

Cellar: Is "laundry room?" a question to me? HWR stands for Hauswirtschaftsraum - housekeeping room. So a laundry room would not be wrong although you can put in other housekeeping related stuff as well.
I think that the microphone is an activity that you would do with your friends and therefore the EG hobby room sounds like the better option to me. Or it could be stored in the cellar, but whenever people want to use it, they put it somewhere else.

Living room: Schrankwände are not really fashionable. Therefore, if you want to consider her interest in fashion, you should replace it. As Schrankwände are huge and heavy and it would be a lot of work to disassemble them, I would imagine that she has it since she moved to the ground floor of the building, if you decide to keep it. Maybe you could add some of the single shelves (from AL?) into the Schrankwand to make it look more typical?

Hobby room: The exercise bike and the ball look like something an older woman would use, but weight training is hardly common amongst that group. Therefore, I would remove at least on of the items. The room still should be full enough.

Gertrud's kitchen: I cannot remember a single white kitchen from that decade. I think a light wooden color would be more common.

Gertrud's bedroom: I think you should place another dresser to fill the gap to the wall. If you do not have one with the right width, you maybe can place them slightly overlapping. You also should try whether you can fill the gap to the ceiling with some kind of matching upper cabinets. As you mentioned that she is interested in money, she definitely would have gone for a customized dresser to not waste any space.

OG living room: The CD boxes all are colorful. You should add a few more bland ones as tax declaration software, digital encyclopedias, dictionaries etc. were common back then and often tried to look respectable that way. The letter tray should be filled with some documents. You also could add a few books that people at that time might have had close to the computer - maybe something tax declaration related, books with tips how to use Word and Excel etc.

OG bedroom: What do you plan to put in the cornered bookcase? Using it as a bookcase would be quite unusual. Using it for vanity items and/or accessories is not a good idea if you want to get rid of the vanity table next to it. For clothes, bedsheets etc. it also would not be such a good idea as an open shelf does not protect from dust.
I would suggest a half-high dresser (Kommode) as replacement for the vanity table. As there is no other mirror in the bedroom, you might put a simple mirror above it. If you want to replace the cornered bookcase as well, you could put two half-high dressers next to each other.
For the regular dressers, I suggest the same as I did for the ground level floor: Make them customized by filling the whole wall.

OG kitchen: The color white seems wrong to me again. It does not have to be a light wooden color this time, but the counters and cabinets should be more colorful somehow. If you do not want to add too much color, maybe you can find recolors where the body of the counters and cabinets remain white, but the doors and handles have another color?
I am not sure whether the family should have the espresso machine as it looks too much like a Kaffeevollautomat in contrast to the smaller coffee maker. I am not sure about the prices back then, but they became more popular in private households from 2005 on while being mainly used in businesses and some rich households before.

OG bathroom: Did you use a walk through OMSP for the litter box? If not, you might want to turn around the bathtub to make it usable.
More pictures from differrent angles might be helpful to be able to tell where more cabinets or shelves might fit. I definitely would add one beneath the sink and use a cabinet with mirror instead of just the mirror. I an not sure whether three open shelves above the bathtub are a good choice as the topmost one will be barely reachable. They also only should be used for stuff like shampoo, not for towels or the like as there will be a really high level of humidity whenever somebody takes a bath. Maybe put the shelves on the long side of the bathtub on one level that can be reached from within the bathtub. As the cabinet beneath the sink most likely will be used for cleaning stuff, you might want to put another cabinet somewhere for towels etc.

Child room: As Katarina has moved out, I would assume that the bedsheets have been changed and do not have to be her style anymore.
I assume that you wanted to make the dresser functional by keeping a bigger distance to the wall and door, but in a small room like this in RL it would be placed directly next to the wall.

Desk: I would not have shelves or cabinets as add-ons. Back then, desks with included cabinets were quite common. As the room has very little storage, you might want to go for a desk that has cabinets/shelves above the writing surface included (e.g. something like that: https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/...qTn1T5I9UkOH_Cw)
Due to the lack of space, I also would suggest replacing the bookcase with another cabinet/dresser. You could add some books to the open shelves of the desk or have single shelves on the wall (above the beds altough I am not a huge fan of having something above the bed). You also should replace the end tables with some that have a little more storage, maybe with one or two drawers and a small open shelf (so that you do not need extra book shelves on the walls). If you have such CC, you also could go for loft beds with storge beneath although you might have to rearrange the furniture a bit in that case to not block the windows.

Desk chair: I would replace the white one with a padded one.

Goth remains: Would there really be stuff left there? Katarina apparently had very little personal stuff before moving out and no matter how small her new apartment is, there will be more than enough place for all her stuff. She most likely also did not have so much money that she could replace everything with new stuff. Therefore, if you want that the room still looks like she once lived there, I would try to do that by having previously commonly shared items that also resemble her style, e.g. a black desk chair, a wall mirror with a black frame, maybe the wallpaper (although I assume that you already did that with the one wall with a different color).