Minecraft: First Floor of New House

A couple of weeks ago, I’d laid a foundation for a new house, and thought a bit about how I wanted it to look; now it’s time to build! Of the building materials that I had easy access to, I thought wooden planks would look best, so I decided to start with that as the basic material for the walls. And I made some glass as well, so I’d be able to put in windows.

But first: there was a circular area nearby forming a weak center, so I’d planted a sapling in the middle of it. Which has now grown into a tree, and it looks a lot better! Still not great, though: I wish the tree were bigger. So I might chop it down and see if the roll of the dice gives me a better tree next time.

A circular area providing a weak center

The circular area with a tree in the middle

Anyways, on to the house. Along the front, I clearly wanted windows symmetrically arranged on both sides of the door; it wasn’t clear to me how wide they should be. At first, I made them three wide, but then the outside edge was too thick; maybe four wide instead?

Three wide and four wide windows viewed from the outside

Three wide and four wide windows viewed from the inside

Viewed from the inside, though, the four wide really didn’t look right: it was hitting right against the corner. So then I had the happy thought that I might want to treat the corner specially on the outside, too: that would get rid of the wide space. So I tried putting a wood column and a stone column on the corner.

Wood column on the corner

Stone column on the corner

The wood looked better, so I went with that. Thinking about it, though, made me wonder: since the floor of the house is raised, the plank area on the bottom of the house looks uncomfortably thick. Should I replace it as well? I tried out wood and stone there, but neither looked right; dirt ended up working better, however.

Wood and stone on the bottom of the house

Dirt on the bottom of the house

Next, I decided to attack the front door area. I wanted to make some sort of porch there; but maybe an accent above the door first? I tried stone, glass, and wood; wood won.

Stone above the door

Glass above the door

Wood above the door

With that, the front was in place except for the porch; before working on that, I fleshed out the sides a bit.

The side facing the pool, with door

The side facing the sand

The front at night, with torches

A sheep trying to glitch through the door

A chicken trying to glitch through the door

Next, the front porch. Miranda had showed me a trick involving stacking fences that you could use to build a column, so I decided to use that. But what should I put on top? At first, I thought birch might be nice, but when I actually tried it out, it looked ghastly; half-height wooden slabs looked rather nice, however. Though, looking at it, I’m no longer convinced that I need that wood accent above the door; maybe I’ll replace that with planks later.

Birch porch roof

Wooden slab porch roof

After that, I turned to the patio / pool area. Here’s what the view out the side door looked like when I started: I decided to get rid of the grass and thin down the border of the pool.

Facing the unfinished pool

I decided that half-height wooden slabs would work well here: a change in level seemed suitable, and slabs would give it a finished look. Here’s a picture of it in progress, and a picture from inside the house.

Building the patio

Facing the patio and pool from the inside of the house

I also put a fence around the patio, and stairs leading down to the pool. (I still have smooth lighting turned off, so the stairs don’t look right.)

On the patio, looking at the pool

Looking up from the pool

And finally, a picture of the current state of the front of the house, with the patio on the side. It’s probably not the most beautiful house in the world (and I’m sure there are building material that I’d like more if I took the time to make them), but, as is doubtless clear from the above, it could have looked a lot worse!

The front of the house, with the patio on the side

I’m planning to build a second story on top; I’m tentatively planning to make the second story a bit smaller than the first story, to help smooth out the transition to the hill that I’m building against, but we’ll see what looks best in practice. (I like the way the fence around the patio provides a change in height, too, I’ll want to work with that.) Before getting too heavily involved in that, though, I think I’ll dig into the hill first. The plan is for this building to connect up with a train station on the other side of the hill; depending on how that works out, I may turn the inside into one large grand entrance hall instead of having a separate second floor.