Fig 11: An outdoor door is a happy door. Apparently.

One interesting thing to make with the advent of basements in The Sims 2 is more than one way into said basement. This is how to make the one above:

1. Put a door, any door will do, on the bottom wall in the basement. When in that view, chop a square or two of foundation out to make a path to the door.
2. Level the land to make a passageway from the door to beyond the foundations and make sure you flatten out at least three or four squares either side of the gap in the foundations.
3. Use connecting stairs to make a walkway down to the door. The game will try to second guess you and your connecting stairs so don't click right away.
4. Level the terrain out again being careful not to block the natural passageway either from the door outwards or from your stairs to the door.

Fig 12: To cover up the dips in the land caused by our basement back door, wrap a picket fence around it.

Entirely optional but for cosmetic purposes more than anything else: Put a fence around the walkaway area you've just created, to hide the dip. Gates are cool too. Here's a white picket fence, but of course any fence (and gate, and dream) will do. :)

Fig 13: Plants are king, for blocking off areas you don't want Sims to see

As a final thing, put some plants next to the basement door with a wall-light or two if only to brighten this area up a bit. It also serves to stop Sims autonomously wandering along the foundations and probably getting stuck.

Fig 14: The finished house.

Finish the house off in the normal fashion and there we are. This house costs $31k to buy, but that can be bought down by removing the expensive items we put in the cellar. Take note that you have to manually cover the hole over the basement with carpet as the game won't do it for you.

This is a bit crude really, the final finish of the house, especially the fence, but as this is only an example, I'm sure you can integrate the decision into the house much better than I have.

So that's basements for you in Sims2. Wasn't that easy? Yes it was. Please now go forth and make your basements! Have fun!

You can download this house (minus the items on the basement walls) from my Files section. Click here.