Earlier, I wrote that I thought I lost the Sims2pack for an old lot I made back in 2007/2008. I really, really liked this lot. It was in all of my hoods, and was rarely vacant. Once my Sims had enough money, this was one of the houses they would choose.

Good memories of this lot. Many good memories.

The problem is ... it's from 2007/2008. I was looking at the Storytelling pictures in that backup, and I could see the VBTs I did in that time frame. I had the game for only about one and a half to two years then ... I was so green when it came to this game! Back in 2007/2008, there wasn't nearly as much info about corruption. Who KNOWS what can of worms I would open up if I loaded this lot? I believe it wasn't occupied at the time I uploaded it to a certain site years ago, but I have no idea anymore. (I had enough trouble remembering all the details of my Great Hood Meltdown earlier this year ... though I did recover most of them!) The stuff people put in lots back then! Not just me. I still have a souvenir from one lot I downloaded. (No ... not the Hug Bug. Something else. More experienced players looking at this souvenir concluded it was harmless to my game, but some did advise me to leave it in there, just in case. I've done that. It's only 26 kb.)

We did so many VBTs back then! I read that you can clean the files, and looking at them (hopefully there is a way to do it outside the game), you can tell if other Sims' data were on the lot and get rid of them before putting it in a good hood. But any house I made before 2011/2012 worries me.

Looking at the picture of the house, though .... it's not bad for a 2007/2008 effort. Not great. If I tried to upload it here, the mods would laugh at me and question my sanity. But it's not rock-bottom horrible. Auto-roofed to the max, and the layout is desperately in need of a fix. But the routing was excellent in that house, and there is an adequate enough floor plan for my Sims to enjoy this place and for me to renovate.

Those misty, water-colored memories, though, can be tinted too much by nostalgia. What I considered my best building effort in 2007/2008 embarrasses me today. I saw a couple of other lots I built. Let's just say they should remain on that disk, never to be resurrected again. I already see a bunch of things I'd need to fix in this lot. The roofing, of course. The porch around it is awkward as crap. CFE would raise that roof a little and make the windows stand out. I need to make more use of the interior space ... it's sprawling now. The only cheat tricks I used back then were constrainfloorelevation and move_objects, and I didn't use the former in this house, from what I can see, so renovating it may not be that bad.

And this house is HUGE! I could fit two Sim families in this place! Lastly, the house dates back when I had only up to Seasons. I shouldn't have any hacks in that house, and certainly could leave them out, but CC can be a tricky thing.

I'm trying to remember ... WHY did I not carry it forward when I moved to Windows 7 in 2013? Was there a reason? It was in my game for such a long time. What made me discard it?

Does anyone get nostalgic about a lot from a long-ago time in your game? Do you re-download it, try to clean it in Sim PE, and renovate it? Or do you use the floor plans and reconstruct a version of it?

Right now, I'm leaning toward reconstruction; maybe make it smaller as well. There was a reason why I made the house larger back then, but I have no such reasons now. The nostalgic side of me, though, would like to see the house as is for old time's sake.

Just place the lot in an empty hood, open it in SimPE and remove the sim references, load the lot, move one thing, save. Then it's ready for use.

On occasion I've rebuilt and redecorated houses. Depending on the house, I've gotten new ideas and new ways to solve old problems, and found ways to redecorate without it looking completely different from the original. If you have good overview shots and several pics of the interior, rebuilding can be worth it - or redecorating, if you still have the base available. Like the house I use for LFB. The first one lacked a bedroom for one of the kids and a laundry room, and didn't have a much needed elevator. A bit of rebuilding and redecoration, and voila! A house I liked a lot more than the original one. The house itself is largely a downloaded house, but I've shoved walls around, and redecorated it several times. Still looks like the old one and has the same style, but I'll move around furniture on occasion, and sometimes change things like pillows, curtains or kitchen equipment, or change up colors here and there - because four kids and some pets does add some wear and tear, and it's nice to change things up a bit now and again. Their couch all of a sudden changed from beige to green with white dots on some point, though - and there might be occasional other continuity errors in interior decoration floating about, but nothing major.

I recently made a new version of the same house, adding in the missing things I mentioned above - but I've used the house since 2008-ish. I've also used the house for several other projects, redecorating it so it doesn't look too much like the LFB house.

I also renovated a hospital lot I made several years ago, making it bigger and much more versatile. But for some reason I'm still using the first one I made for the story. I did end up redecorating it a bit, so I can use it more (I have two other lots I tend to use, but they keep giving me pink-flashing, so I'd rather not if I can avoid it), but largely it's the same building, so it's been around since 2009-ish.

If you have the floor plan, I would just rebuild. Then you can decorate from scratch as you go.

Depends on my mood If I feel like building, I'd start over; if I want to play with Sims, I won't.

Lots like that I always rebuilt. Not only because I didn't know about saving houses back than, but also so I could feel the house again, after a long no see.

so far I have not backed up any lots/neighborhoods I created. thus I generally rebuilt.
yet if I did backup, I would have renovated.