Our second collection is The Palm House, London, England. The Palm House in the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew was designed by Decimus Burton & Richard Turner, the supervising architects, and was built entirely of glass & iron between 1844 to 1848. It is 363 feet long by 100 feet wide and rises to a height of 66 feet. It is hard to imagine these days how much of an impact this magnificent structure and its contents initially made. Besides educating visitors in the newly discovered wonders of the natural world, one of the functions of English greenhouses at the time was to display the exotic range of plants and flowers that flourished in the British Empire. In the days when colour images of other lands were almost non-existent or drenched in exaggeration or fantasy, visitors would flock in their hundreds from all over the country to come and marvel at the exciting new discoveries opened up to the easy reach of the general public for the first time.
The restrictions of the game meant that some compromise had to be made in attempting to recreate the intricate ironwork superstructure. This will mean that there is some bleeding of the roof pieces through walls; this really could not be avoided in order to get them to tile as a complete sectional roof in the right places. Judicious placing of objects behind the pieces to hide the bleeding should get round this. Also please note that some of the indoor trees will bleed through the second floor; that is because they were really meant to go underneath the taller roof segments.
New
style Palm House, Lot 9 
Thanks to the superlative work in Z-Buffer-land by Koromo, the glass roof pieces will now go on your second floor. They will take some getting used to, but I think you will agree that the overall effect is worth it several times over. To achieve this effect, you will need to build your second floor with a one-tile gap. Use the mock window piece in the gap. This does not drop in the game (yet - we're working on it) but with the walls up it looks identical to a normal wall with a window in. You can then place your roof pieces much as you did for the first floor - only you will note that they are much higher up.
Your sims will happily walk about underneath all the pieces, and you can place furniture without any problems. I have priced these new roof pieces a little higher, so that they do not get mixed up with the normal ones in your game catalogue - and they are clearly marked "Second Floor Roof". We are also working on making these pieces droppable, but for the moment your sims won't mind, I'm sure ;o)
Second
floor roof kit part 1:
Second floor roof kit part 2:
If you previously downloaded the normal house zip, to achieve this effect all you need to do is take one second floor wall tile away, and follow the above instructions! Please note however that the staircase will not go underneath the new roof style (yet - still working on that too!) so you will have to move the staircase outside. The "normal" style houses can still be downloaded below:
The
Palm House, Lot 9
PLEASE NOTE: This zip does not contain any objects, walls or floors. You will need to download, unzip and install all the object, wall & floor zips from below before playing this house, otherwise you will get the dreaded "missing objects" box and the house will be incomplete - and may even crash your game. The zip file contains TWO versions of the same house - without the new second floor roof. Before installing the one you want, you MUST rename it to House09.iff.
I am proud to present two
prints by Littlestorms of Abstract Sims
These gorgeous large scale paintings were inspired by the Palm House theme, and are just a taster of what is in store for you over at the innovative http://www.littlestorms.net/ - including many more similar prints for your Palm House. Go there. Go there now!
Tuktu of www.cottageindustrysims.com has kindly modified the windows so that they drop in HD!
Door
Stairs & fence
Droppable windows
I am releasing the staircase as the filigree wrought iron effect goes so well with the entire theme. However, I have still to get the hang of relining up all the sprites, and the staircase may therefore appear to be rather unsafe at certain zooms / angles. One of the upper banisters especially appears to be coming away from the main staircase itself. I guess I can't give up the computer wuss title just yet, so as always, if anyone can fix this, please let me know and I would be happy to replace the zip. The single tiled fence rug was an original idea by STP Carly at the immortal Sims Tattoo Parlour http://perso.wanadoo.fr/savuka/carly and was cloned with her kind permission.
Barrel
Palm, Barrel Palm cluster, two types of undergrowth
The undergrowth was cloned from original ground cover and palm images with kind permission from Koromo, at the magnificent Persimmon Grove http://members.lycos.co.uk/persimmongrove/
The pillars are the original Pluto Arch from Hot Date.
Four trees
Tree lights 
You will need the Party Lights from the official site for the trees with lights to work. Find these items under build mode / walls.
Two Banana palm clusters, four paintings
The Marianne North Gallery in Kew Botanical Gardens was purpose-built to display the botanical paintings of this 19th Century artist who travelled the world in search of new specimens to paint. Nearly 850 of Marianne North's oil paintings are on show, in the original packed-in Victorian arrangement of 1882. The pictures are highly realist (and thus of great interest to the botanist) and as noted by a contemporary writer, "...it is more likely that future generations will have a better opportunity of appreciating the gift than is afforded at the present time, since many of the scenes depicted are slowly but surely disappearing before the ploughs and herds, the fires and the axes, of the colonist and the pioneer." The pictures vary from detailed close-ups of fruits and leaves to panoramic views similar to those of Edward Lear, and studies of "....monstrous vegetative inhabitants of native villages, and reptiles and birds that inhabit the jungle." A Portrait of Marianne North accompanies three of her works for your sim home.
Five Botanical prints
Five types of Palm Tree
Four piece sectional roof
This needs the transparent
floor from the beautiful Caro's
Sim Kagen The sectional glass roof was recoloured with kind permission from
Koromo, at the magnificent Persimmon Grove http://members.lycos.co.uk/persimmongrove/
You may not want glass
roofing all the way throughout your Palm House, so here are some gable sections
to give you the maximum roofing options.
This one zip contains two walls, two floors and the roof bmp. Unzip to a temporary storage folder, and move the files ending in:
If you would like to redesign or recolor objects from the Palm House set, you will need to ask the same permissions as I did from the original designer - these are as follows:
All links to the original site where I have made the recolour from are given. See home page for more details.
