Whether room on your lot is at a premium, or for just a style feature, having an underground garage with attached basement is totally and complete radical. I’ve found a fun and easy way to make one. You can always change the garage doors and wallpaper.

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Step 1.

Pick a lot (this one is large and flatten the ground. Itend to save often so I don’t lose anything, but you may want to go throughentire sections before saving so that you can hit the undo arrow when mistakesoccur. Yes indeed, I make a BUNCH of those, too.  I’m using a large lot forthis tutorial, but you really can use any lot that allows for at least one extension piece to the driveway.  With this basement you will be able todecorate, hang pictures on the wall…basically you can do anything you wouldwith an above ground room.

Step 2.  

Place an entry piece of driveway. FYI: Here iswhere you choose the driveway you want to match your house. Once you havestarted the slop the driveway cannot be changed without starting over.

 

Step 3.

Attach 1 to 3 driveway extension pieces. I am adding 3pieces, but you can actually do this with one (really steep incline for smallerlots) to as many extension pieces as will fit on your lot, but I like the lookof a gradual incline allowed by 2-3 extensions.

Step 4.  

Add a strip of wall and any garage door in front of thelast extension piece. 

Step 5.

Place a square of foundation in the general area that youwill want the basement. You do not have to be precise because you will beremoving it later. Then, choose a wallpaper design that has an obviousbaseboard. I like this one because the light color makes it easy to see.

Step 6.

Using the large size lowering tool (makes it much easierto see the wallpaper), click down EXACTLY12 times OR until you can see thebottom of the baseboard but no more.

Step 7.

Click on keyboard all at once, the buttons Shift, Ctrland C to open the dialogue box. In the dialogue box type boolpropconstrainFloorElevation false.

Step 8.

Now flatten the area under the garage. As you can see,the drive is floating.  Don’t worry about this because it will collapse to theright position when you exit to the neighborhood and re-enter the lot. At thispoint, you can choose to have a full basement, or just a basement garage.  I’mmaking a full basement in this tutorial to show how easy it is. We’ll come backto the foundation in a moment.

Step 9.

Using the small leveler tool, click down EXACTLY 1 clickon each corner of this tile (if you are making a single extension piecegarage you may wish to use the tile one closer to the sidewalk and go with 2click everywhere I have said 1 click).

Step 10.

Now flatten the 5 tile squares below the driveway.

Step 11.

Flatten to the end. I do this so that I don’t have tokeep track of how many clicks. This allows for lowering only 1 click each timeyou make a change.

Step 12.

Lower the next square by one click, and again, flattenthe length.

Step 13.

Okay this is going to get old real quickly. Just keepdoing the above steps until the ground level is even with the basement floor.**As you probably have figured out, it takes the same total lowering of 12single clicks to get to the basement level (the same 12 clicks at the beginningwhen you lowered to the bottom of the wallpaper). Let’s turn the elevationcheat off. Shift, Ctrl and C to open the dialogue box and type boolpropconstrainFloorElevation true.  Isn’t this just the weirdest looking thing –floating driveway.

Time to make this look like a real driveway.  Save, exitto the neighborhood and re-enter the lot.

Step 14.

WOW! Isn’t that too frosty? The drive is now flat on theground.

Step 15.

Now Ctrl drag and click to delete the original foundationpiece.

Step 16.

I like to flip the screen to draw the wall. You can makeyour basement any size or shape from here. I’ve made mine a simple L.

Step 17.

Place the foundation along the outside of the walls.

Step 18.

Outline the entire basement with the foundation tool.

Now cover the blank wall to match the foundationwallpaper (or you can change it all to whatever wallpaper you like on yourfoundation, the choices are as limitless as your imagination).

Step 19.

Well, we are all done with this tutorial. Now all youneed to do is design and decorate your home.  This one is called Beauty of theSouth and can be found here at TSR.  I hope you have as much fun with this wayof designing basements and underground garages as I have.