Finally managed to upload the flippin' photos! Unfortunately they're not as big as my previous entries, but Tinypic didn't even want to load up
Thanks to wgroome for hosting the contest; while I've enjoyed the challenge I'll be glad to go back to simply playing sims rather than building.

Round 4: The Barkworth Family

After months spent roaming the countryside for that elusive pine cabin, the estate agent decided to try something new. She took Mike and Meadow Barkworth into New Pleasantview to take a look at what used to be a Public House, now cunningly converted into a small family home:




Much to the agent's surprise and delight, the newlyweds loved it, and it wasn't long before the contracts were exchanged and they obtained the keys to the property.

Ground Floor:




First Floor:




The place still had the olde worlde pub feel, with exposed beams and large open fireplace in the lounge:




The beams continued in the kitchen, which looked extremely grand with its dark red staining to the cabinets coupled with black granite worktops:




Upstairs, what could have been a very uninteresting landing had been transformed with plants and wall hangings. There was also plenty of space for Meadow's sewing machine:




The bathroom was an unusual shape, but it seemed to work with the supposed "sauna wall lights" and the dark coloured suite:




The final room was the master (and currently only) bedroom. It too was decked out with wood, but the large window area gave plenty of space for flowering potted plants. A small coffee-table held Meadow's favourite items: a replica of her bridal bouquet, a cactus garden and the first teddy bear she'd managed to sew successfully. She planned to give it to her firstborn child.




It wasn't long before two became three; only a year after moving in, Mike and Meadow Barkworth welcomed their baby daughter Molly to the family. Now, where would her room be?

Last edited by Selly_2009 : 23rd Apr 2012 at 12:00 AM.

Guys, the final few contestants are apparently very close to getting their entries in so I'm going to extend the round for a little bit longer!

Just to be fair to the rest of you, you can change your Round 4 entries until the round is closed, so if you felt like there was something that wasn't quite perfect you have the opportunity to fix it! It is the last round after all!

Squeaking in under the wire again. I've had a great time with this contest, but I am very glad it is over. This is my final few months at school, and let me tell you, its no picnic!

Rain Daniels is a struggling artist. Her main focus is on metal sculpture works, but she also does ceramics and painting. When she was looking for a place to do her work in, high ceilings were a must. She found this old abandoned train station and it was about the same price as a two bedroom loft was going for in the city. She took one look at the arching beams and the old glass ceiling and she was sold.











She has plenty of space to work on all three of her passions in this house.










It didn't take much to convert the two public washrooms into a bathroom and plumbing for the kitchen, and she put up a curtain between her bedroom and the rest of the house and she was set.




Thanks everyone! It's available for download now!

Last edited by Phaenoh : 25th Apr 2012 at 6:10 PM.

Phaenoh, you're entries have been amazing! You are so creative! One of my tossed out homes for Rain was an old train car, but as I couldn't realistically make it 2 floors, it was just too darn small. You really have a knack for maximizing small areas. I just can't ever seem to make smaller spaces work well.

Thanks jones! Your comment actually made me realize I was missing the top down for my little attic studio. Since its only 11 tiles and I already had my full 8 photos in I added it into my main floors top down. I know we aren't allowed collages, but it just doesn't seem worth it to waste an entire photo on that few squares. The 'mood' photos are more important in my opinion. Please don't knock my score down! It's not covering anything important and its just 2 rows of tiles.

Also, wgroome, jones has her entry in already. I think we are just waiting on whiterider.

Oh Yay! Now I can give her a stool! (and an indoor table for eating, lol)

Ah, my entry for this round should be a lot better than it is - but I have so much work, and am sick now too, I think this is the best that I can do. I apologise for holding you all up, even if it was only for a day.

Round Four - The Montenegro Family
Raine Montenegro has always loved the ocean. The glisten of the water, the sound of the waves, the smell of salt, seaweed, and rat piss - it inspires her to great artistic heights (which is a good thing too, because her normal artistic plateau doesn't seem to sell all that well). When this simple little beach shack (Raine prefers the moniker "beach villa") came onto the market, Raine was absolutely thrilled, and promptly blew her life savings on it.



The house is small, but that doesn't bother Raine - after all, when you can explore whole universes in your imagination, who needs to be able to pee without their knees hitting the door? Well, yeah, something like that.



From the front, the house seems simple and unassuming, with just enough space for Raine's very "special" VW. Steps lead up to the house itself, with the studio separated from the main house by a breezy open-air walkway.



Inside, Raine's questionable grasp of personal finance makes itself known: the front door leads, to the left, to a tiny nook where Raine can relax on those (hopefully) rare occasions whereupon her creative juices congeal and get stuck in the bottle.



To the right is the kitchen and dining area, boldly decorated in true Raine fashion, and home to Raine's proudest work - Mischa, the giant, pink teddy bear. Art's not all about "deep" incomprehensible oblongs and wading through poppy seeds, you know!



Back through the hall and past the bathroom is Raine's bedroom, cosy and comfortable. Having never managed to meet another living soul who can commune with the fairies like she can, Raine is cheerfully anticipating many years of sleeping spread-eagle across that double bed - restricting one's body restricts the soul, you know.



Heading out the back door is the picturesque deck, and more importantly, Raine's studio. Spacious, airy, and with a beautiful view of the sea, Raine can happily spend hours at a time crafting magic out of random scraps in here - although she has an unfortunate habit of spending at least a few of those hours staring out of the window, lost in thought.



All in all, the world just doesn't get better, brighter, or more beautiful than life at Raine's villa.

With whiterider's entry in, we have a full set! The contest is going to stay open until Wednesday 25/04/2012 11:59:59 GMT+1, so you can still make any changes you'd like, but then it will close and the judges and I will start our final round of judging!

I'd like to thank everybody who has participated throughout the competition for producing some phenomenal entries!

Whew! I love multi-round contests, but it's always so intense!!!

Thanks Wgroome for hosting this, I had a ton of fun.
Thanks to all the participants for hanging in there and making the whole thing a real challenge. I've been impressed with your entries.

I'd like to say the same:

Thanks wgroome for hosting this contest.

I hope the final entries will be really tight because there are just so many great houses here.

I also would like wgroome and all the judges for the effort and the time spent in this contest! I've never been part of anything like this, and I had lots of fun doing those lots and learned a lot from all the feedback. Thank you so much!

This was the first contest I ever entered. I sure picked a big one! lol! It was intense for sure, but I loved it!

Right, no more changing your entries, guys... Round 4 is officially closed!

The judges and I will now do our final judging, and we'll get back to you as soon as we can with the final results!

My scores are in!

Little shameless promotion here, but I'm now hosting a TS2 Scrapbooking Contest, so if you are in the market for a new contest now that this one is wrapping up, have a look!

Round 4 Scores (& Final Results!)

Here are the scores for Round 4. You can sort by family or sort the scores in ascending or descending order using the arrows at the top of each column. If you spot a mathematical discrepancy, please PM me! ) The judges' order is not necessarily the same order as the main contest post, but each set of scores is consistent (the Judge 1 column contains scores from the same judge) and remains the same from all the other round scores.

Contestant	Family	Judge 1	Judge 2	Judge 3	Total	Final Total
aaries16	Montenegro	20 (8/4/8)	18 (7/4/7)	20 (6/4/10)	58	228
ForeverCamp	Gravel	19 (7/3/9)	19 (7/4/8)	23 (9/4/10)	61	240
sandymdh	Montenegro	23 (9/5/9)	19 (8/3/8)	23 (8/5/10)	65	255
Riptide651	Lewis	21 (8/4/9)	22 (9/4/9)	22 (8/4/10)	65	262 (3rd)
whiterider	Montenegro	22 (8/5/9)	21 (8/5/8)	23 (8/5/10)	66	259.5 (5th)
Phaenoh	Montenegro	25 (10/5/10)	23 (10/4/9)	25 (10/5/10)	73	277.5 (1st)
armiel	Lewis	21 (8/5/8)	21 (9/4/8)	21 (7/4/10)	63	272.5 (2nd)
jones7659	Montenegro	20 (8/3/9)	18 (7/4/7)	20 (8/3/9)	58	244
Clashfan	Montenegro	23 (8/5/10)	19 (6/4/7)	19 (6/3/10)	59	223.5
katalina522	Gravel	24 (9/5/10)	18 (7/4/7)	20 (8/3/9)	62	243
Jaguwar	Gravel	19 (7/5/7)	21 (9/4/8)	24 (10/5/9)	64	261.5 (4th)
lipe2k	Gravel	17 (6/5/6)	19 (7/4/8)	21 (9/4/8)	57	246
Sulyuki	Gravel	21 (8/5/8)	20 (8/4/8)	20 (9/4/7)	61	249
triciamanly	Barkworth	17 (7/3/7)	18 (7/4/7)	20 (7/3/10)	55	204
Rosebud1773	Barkworth	19 (8/3/8)	16 (6/3/7)	20 (7/4/9)	55	201.5
Selly_2009	Barkworth	19(7/4/8)	17 (7/3/7)	18 (7/3/8)	54	217

So, a big congratulations to Phaenoh for her amazing entries that landed her 1st place, and to armiel and Riptide651 who picked up 2nd and 3rd place, respectively. A big well done and a personal thank you to everybody else who entered... I was shocked every round to see the consideration and effort that went in to each lot to make them all exceptional and unique.

A big, big thank you to the wonderful judges, kattenijin and missroxor for their scores and feedback (and Elexis for offering to be a Emergency Judge - even though it wasn't required this time!)

I hope you all had fun with the contest. I really enjoyed hosting it and have learnt a great deal from this and can't wait to launch a new contest very soon. If you've got any feedback about this contest (including its hosting and how it could be improved!) you can reply to the final feedback PM and let me know what you think so I can make the next contest I run even better than this!

Well done to you all, again!

Whew, what a ride! Congratulations to my fellow contestants. What a ride it's been, hasn't it?

A special congrats to our top three, I know it was tight there and anybody's game (if I remember correctly, in the 3rd round only 1 point separated 1st from 2nd place). Thanks to everyone who stuck it through to the end, and to those who attempted it at all, I wish you hadn't gotten interrupted. Next time, right?

Judges (and emergency judge! :D) thank you SO much, I can't imagine being in your place and having to make these decisions.

Finally, wgroome, thanks for hosting, this was an awesome concept. I enjoyed it immensely.

Thanks to wgroome for holding the contest, it was really fun!

Hey guys, sorry you haven't got your feedback yet - I've had a couple of exams the last few days that I've had to revise for. I've got my last class this afternoon, though (and no more exams for a few weeks!) so I'll send out the feedback this evening!

EDIT:
All the feedback PMs have been sent out! This contest is officially over, I guess!

Last edited by wgroome : 3rd May 2012 at 11:51 PM.