Concept:
In each round of this contest, you will be given a foundation on which to build a house. There are 4 different families looking for homes - one for each round. Using each family's unique requirements, you build a house on the round's foundation. You can pick any family for any round, but - obviously - you can't use any family more than once.

Qualifications to Host:
I am have competed in the following contests: Superb Sibling Contest (3rd), Maxis Makeover Sim Edition: Belladonna Cove (4th), Agency Search: The Next Rising Star (4th), Picture This! A Mini Contest (4th), MTS Official 2012 Calendar Contest: TS2 (July) and hosted two contests: The TV Producer Contest and The Aspiration and Me Contest. I previously ran this contest over at The Sims Circle, and it was really good fun I just had to bring it here!

Rules:

• This contest is open to TS2 and TS3 entries.
• There will be no eliminations.
• Any/all custom content is allowed. There are no bonuses/penalties for CC use in any way. You can make a lovely home without it and get high marks!
• You can use any/all EPs and SPs. The families are designed to be Base Game compatible - they have no pets, for example.
• Photoshopping is allowed for tweaking/enhancing colour, sharpening and adding borders only.

Requirements:

• For each round, you need to build the house meeting the requirements of that particular family.
• It is your decision which family lives in each house, so make sure you think carefully about which family will suit each foundation. You may want to leave the most adaptable family until last!
• Please clearly state the family you have selected in your entry.
• No family has a budget, but remember that mansions don't suit everybody!
• You can only build in the foundation area, and you can build two floors. The second floor cannot go over the edge of the foundation in any way either.
• Basements and separate or attached garages are not allowed. Driveways by themself are allowed anywhere on the lot.
• The foundation template can be rotated any way (but not mirrored) and can be placed anywhere on the lot. Gardens (including paved areas) are not included in the foundation and can be placed anywhere.
• For each round, you can take up to 8 pictures (no collages) - you must provide one external picture showing the front of the house, and one top-down picture of each floor of your house (max. 2) and the rest of the pictures can be of any rooms or areas of the house. You can make the families and take pictures of them living in the house, or you can just show off the house without Sims in it.

Timeline:
Each round will last for three weeks, however the rounds will overlap by a week (so during the final week of each round the next round will also be in progress.) Extensions may be offered (of no more than 2 days) if they are desperately needed - however three weeks should be sufficient. The first round will begin when the contest is approved.

Judging:
Each entry will be judged by 3 judges and each providing a score out of 25. The judges will mark on the follow criteria:

• House design - 10 points: Does the house look and feel like attention and care has gone into its building and designing?
  (Judges will consider breaking any rules such as the inclusion of external, detached buildings and basements etc. in this section and change their score accordingly.)
• Foundation ingenuity - 5 points: as the foundation (and the way the rooms have been divided up) been used cleverly?
  (0 points will be awarded from each judge if the foundation is not correct.)
• Family requirements - 10 points: Does it look like the chosen family would like to live here? Have the requirements in the family bio been met?

Judge 1	Judge 2	Judge 3	Emergency Judge
wgroome	kattenijin	missroxor	Elexis

Contestants:

Contestant Name	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Round 4
Yenkas	Montenegro	WITHDRAWN	---	---
aaries16	Barkworth	Gravel	Lewis	Montenegro
ForeverCamp	Montenegro	Lewis	Barkworth	Gravel
sandymdh	Barkworth	Lewis	Gravel	Montenegro
Shhh	Barkworth	Gravel	NO SUBMISSION	---
Riptide651	Barkworth	Gravel	Montenegro	Lewis
noteardrops	Barkworth	NO SUBMISSION	---	---
NollemD	Montenegro	NO SUBMISSION	---	---
Buckley	Lewis	Montenegro	NO SUBMISSION	---
whiterider	Gravel	Barkworth	Lewis	Montenegro
Phaenoh	Gravel	Lewis	Barkworth	Montenegro
lunajumper44	Montenegro	Gravel	WITHDRAWN	---
armiel	Gravel	Barkworth	Montenegro	Lewis
bakafox	Gravel	WITHDRAWN	---	---
jones7659	Barkworth	Gravel	Lewis	Montenegro
Hencing	Barkworth	Lewis	WITHDRAWN	---
Clashfan	Gravel	Lewis	Barkworth	Montenegro
katalina522	Montenegro	Lewis	Barkworth	Gravel
Jaguwar	Montenegro	Lewis	Barkworth	Gravel
Tamlyn	Montenegro	WITHDRAWN	---	---
Simsica	Lewis	WITHDRAWN	---	---
NatteryakToad	Montenegro	Gravel	WITHDRAWN	---
lipe2k	Montenegro	Lewis	Barkworth	Gravel
Sulyuki	Montengero	Lewis	Barkworth	Gravel
triciamanly	Gravel	Lewis	Montenegro	Barkworth
RoseBud1773	Lewis	Gravel	Montenegro	Barkworth
Selly_2009	Gravel	Lewis	Montenegro	Barkworth

Rounds:

	Start Date	Close Date	Status
Round 1	15/02/2012	08/03/2012	SCORES
Round 2	29/02/2012	21/03/2012	SCORES
Round 3	14/03/2012	08/04/2012	SCORES
Round 4	28/03/2012	25/04/2012	SCORES

All rounds will close at 11:59:59 BST.

Family Bios:

• The Barkworth Family - Mike and Meadow Barkworth both love the outdoors. They've always dreamed out having a beautiful log cabin home they can come back to after a long day of hiking and insect collecting. They would love for their house to be a traditional pine cabin, with a gorgeous fireplace in the living room. The bathroom(s) should be simple and in-keeping with the style of the house, and Meadow loves the idea of flowers, home-made quilts and decorations all throughout the house.
• The Montenegro Family - Rain Montenegro is a struggling artist. Her house is filled with art projects in various states of completion, but she wants a studio in her house so she can escape the world and focus on her art. As for the rest of the house, simple, cheap furniture will do, as long as it's bright and colourful. Rain loves the colour green, but can't stand purple.
• The Lewis Family - When Layton and Lucinda found out they were expecting it was the greatest day of their lives. When they found out they were having triplets? Not so much. Now their three daughters (athletic Lara, bookworm Leanne and musician Lorrie) are all teenagers, they are demanding their own rooms. Layton and Lucinda are happy to move, but want a large master bedroom and their own en-suite bathroom.
• The Gravel Family - Tyler Gravel is a romantic, fitness fanatic and rising athlete. He wants his house to have a modern feel, and the wow factor that will impress all the ladies. A home-gym is a must, and a swimming pool outside would be his idea of perfection. Tyler also wants a guest bedroom for when his family fly in to town to watch his matches.

Contest Approved

• Do not post replies and/or contest applications before the contest host has checked in on this thread, or your post will be deleted.
• DO NOT WRITE USELESS POSTS like "Hey cool contest, I think I might join." Reserve type posts and useless posts about coming back with an application will be deleted.

This sounds like a lot of fun!

But I have a couple of questions...

1. We're allowed 2 floors within the space of the foundation - but do both floors have to be above the foundation, or can one be a basement?
2. I'm guessing driveways would be allowed as part of the garden/landscaping outside of the foundation space, but what about garages - are they allowed?

Croutonian... Basements are not allowed, and driveways are allowed, but garages are not.

This may sound a stupid question, but do we have to use the exact shape and size of the foundation picture you posted, or is it okay to tweak the sizes?

Just a quick question, sorry if it's a really stupid question, you said that the 2nd floor couldn't go over the foundation, does that include the roof? Can the roof 'overhang' and go over the foundations?

vhanster... the size must stay exactly the same, but you can rotate (not mirror) the foundation any way and place it anywhere on the lot. You can also use any size lot that you want.
flatpack... Nothing can overhang... your entire building must fit over the foundation. You can always use any spare space as decking or outside areas; and then put an overhanging roof over these areas.

Can decks and stages be added to the foundation? How about using boolprop constrainFloorElevation true/false cheat to flatten a wall to add more room to the house? In other words, it is technically possible to make a foundation-like structure without ever adding a foundation, just use walls instead.

Is there a lot size limit, or can it be whatever size we choose?

I'll volunteer to be a judge. You can check back through old contests to see I've both hosted and judged before.

Normally I would jump at the chance to do a contest like this but I just have too many other things I need to get finished that I don't think I'll have time for this too :/ I would however still like to join in the fun so if you still have vacancies can I please be a judge? (I would spend days on a build but can judge in a few hours so I'll have time for that )

Qualifications to judge: I've judged a couple of TS2 beauty contests and then judged two contests which I also hosted (Make Me a Model and Picture This!). I've also competed in a couple of TS3 contests including the original foundations contest (2nd place) and the calendar contest (Feb). I have a few houses uploaded and have also written two build tutorials.

I have been DYING for one of these.

Question: are we allowed to use friezes(like between floors 1 and 2) as long as they are inside the foundation frame?
Also, are we allowed to build three stories?

And.. (sorry about so many questions) Umm.. are we allowed to use CC, in this case Yogi-Tea's lower elevator for the friezes.

And... Are we allowed to edit the terrain under the foundation, like build it on a slope.

No, wgroome only allows a maximum of two stories.
Yes, you are allowed to use custom content and also allowed to build without it. Custom content or lack thereof has no effect on the scoring, in wgroome's words.

NollemD... no, you cannot add decking to the foundation (and therefore changing the foundation shape at all.) The building doesn't have to exactly fit round the edge of the foundation, though, and some areas can be left to become outside decking-like areas - but the foundation itself must remain the same shape, size and must remain foundation.

ForeverCamp... You can use any size lot you would like, however you can't build any external buildings such as garages or sheds (a paved outside garden area would be okay, though, for example, as long as there are no walls/roof!)

Riptide651... You can only have the foundation itself and two stories on top of that, so no, you can't have a third story. I'm not familiar with the piece of CC you have mentioned, but, as long as it doesn't not interfere with any of the building rules and you believe it suits the family you are building for there is no reason you cannot use it! As for altering the terrain under the foundation, that is fine.

kattenijin and missroxor... you are now judges! Thank you very much for offering to help! I still need an emergency judge, though, if anybody is interested.

This contest looks great. A question, can we change the height of the foundation?

aUserName... You can change the height of the foundation, but you cannot build a basement or use any other "trick" - as it were - to gain extra building space by using a tall foundation.

I can't believe I've never posted on the forums. I was notified on livejournal and decided to give the contest a go. Very excited for it!

I've chosen for the Montenegro family. It was very hard to take only eight pictures, though.

Rain Montenegro, the struggling artist has specialised in painting and pottery and her pots can be found everywhere, from dining room to bathroom. However, she loves green and greenery and makes flower bouquets for fun as well. Rain has a fondness for IKEA furniture.

Sry more questions :/

Does a frieze count as a story?

Yenkas... Thank you for the first - and I must say, a lovely - entry!

Riptide651... I am counting stories as they are counted in the game... foundation is not included as a level, then you get two levels of playable space and a three level for roofs (you can't have any useable space on this floor, so no roof top terraces on the third level!)

I built the first foundation for Rain Montenegro:



I envisioned Rain to be a carefree, slightly-eccentric sort of artist, so her home has plenty of bright, mildly-mismatched colour schemes and writing and drawing on the walls throughout the main level of her home.



I'm pretty proud of that kitchen and studio, I'm not going to lie. I had a lot of fun designing the colour scheme for that one.



Rain's living room loft and bedroom are both a little less... splashy than the kitchen area, but still have lots of colour to inspire her artwork:



I think I'm actually going to leave that house where it is in Pleasantview - I like it for a future resident.

aaries16, ForeverCamp... Thank you for two more awesome entries. My favourite part of this challenge is that everyone doesn't have to pick the same family every round, which means that every round we get to see some really clever uses of the same foundations, and yours are no exception!

Dear Mr and Mrs Barkworth,
Thank you for registering with our real estate agency. We have a new listing today which I think would be just what you're looking for. It's a modern take on a log cabin, maybe not as traditional as you were looking for but it has some real advantages over that style. Firstly it has large windows and lets in a lot of light as well as great views of the outdoors. Secondly it has room for a small seating area on each floor at the front of the house and a good size garden with fruit and veg patch, hot tub and eating area. The house is situated next to a park too so perfect for outdoor lovers.

The ground floor contains a small hallway with spiral staircase. To the left is a front-to-back living room with focal point fireplace. There are patio doors at the back giving easy access to the garden.

To the other side of the hallway is the dining room with eating area and cabinet.

Past the dining room is a small W.C. and fully equipped kitchen.

Upstairs provides a master bedroom with ensuite shower room and small walk-in wardrobe.

The main bathroom has been decorated in keeping with the home using timber panelling. It boasts a large bath and his & hers sinks.

There is a second double-bedroom which would be perfect for guests.
Floor Plans:
Ground Floor

First Floor

Despite the modern design the interior has been decorated in a traditional style and would feel as homely as any log cabin. Most rooms, if not using the original timber cladding, have wooden panelling and wallpaper bringing some colour into the house. It is a house designed for lovers of the outdoors!

How long until applications have to be in?