The Rec Room, the Crawl Space and the Skills Room

As mentioned before, there was a lot of discussion at the Foobiverse about the crawlspace in the Pattermanse, as well as the actual location of the rec room.  Although Lynn Johnston's floor plan seemed to place the rec room on the ground floor, there are stairs leading down to it, and this strip shows April on those stairs listening to Mike and Deanna leaning over the stair railing on the upper storey as they talk about taking her house away, so the rec room apparently was in the basement.

Lengthy debate on the actual location of the rec room and how to build a Pattermanse in Sims 3.

Anyway, this pic from one of the 'Find Ned' games shows the rec room at the bottom of the stairs, making it clear to me that it wasn't a sunken room on the ground floor.  There's also a little door to the left of the stairs which I believe is leading into the magical crawl space.

My interpretation:

Since the entire rec room wasn't visible in the drawing, I've added in a sofa and then scattered toys and games generally around the rest of it.  It's a bit tricky to try to make it messy, since Sims 3 requires everything to be laid out on a grid, automatically making it appear tidier.  My walls don't match exactly the drawing above because I'd done them according to the floor plan, which showed the narrow hall leading to the bathroom.  I suppose I could have squared off that corner of the room to match the drawing, but then the aquarium is too far away from the crawl space door.  (I used a tomb door for the crawl space...)

This overhead view gives a better view of the crawl space.  See the big rock in there? Things can get stuck behind it and you'd never know unless you went all the way in.  :)

Having the rec room in the basement led to a large hole on the ground floor of the house since there wasn't any way to move other rooms around without destroying the outer perimeter of the house, or by having a massive laundry room and workshop.  Rather than just leave the space a complete waste, I added a skills room which obviously doesn't appear in the comic strip, but which is handy for any Sims making this their home:

There's some fitness equipment, stereo for working out or dancing, a chess table, piano and an easel.  It's accessible through the workshop or the back hallway.  I'm not entirely thrilled with it after playing with the house for a bit: another bathroom or two on that floor would have been handier!