More Awesome Than You!

For this month's Eaxis House of Fail I thought I would build some apartments. I've only done this once before and seem to remember spending ages getting them furnished and looking good only to find that wasn't (or very little) furniture there when I moved sims in. So my questions are:

Exactly what furnishings and fittings will be visible when the apartment is rented out?
Does everything in the communal area get saved and loaded for any family to use?
Can I have a private garden for a specific apartment provided it is walled off and accessible from only that apartment?

You can now easily keep all furnishing with Pes' apthack, but if you choose the unfurnished apartment, anything in build mode, fridges, stoves, counters, sinks, toilets, showers, and closets will remain. If an NPC rents the apartment, everything will stay.

Communal area stuff always stays.

Yes, personal gardens are possible.

Shift-Click + "Rent Furnished Apartment" will keep the furniture intact. Otherwise, fixtures are the only things that will remain other than build mode things. Also, remember that floor dividers act as walls, so they can either be A.) A hindrance, in that cutting off an entire room with them will turn it into common area and other people will Do Want it, or B.) can be used strategically to enclose something in the common area as your own by connecting it to your apartment by a locked door.

Also, if you have the apartment on a foundation, but want a yard on the ground, make sure there is an enclosed area around the door out. I usually do this by making an invisible fence on the floor tiles extended from the foundation in the same configuration as the fence on the lawn. Then just make a porch and stairs down. I'm fairly sure that as long as you have stairs down and no doors leading to the common area, the lawn will be considered "yours".

Cheers. A furnished apartment block it is then, though it will take quite a while longer to complete and test.

I have some existing buildings I want to convert to apartments.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/cwykes/MeadowLawns/jubileegardens/jubileegardens.html
They're terraced houses and I built them in OFB for multiple occupancy - the idea was to use Uni or OFB lockable doors to keep the families separate, but they weren't easy to play.  I've had problems with my first attempts at converting them to AL.  The playabes end up with service NPC tokens according to the lotdebugger.  I've had AL about a week, so I'm behind the curve...  if there's a guide, please point me in the right direction..

1. Is converting an existing lot as simple as a,b c?
a) eliminate all access but 1 door,
b) change that door to an AL door
c) use changelotzoning apartmentbase

2. Can I convert existing occupied lots?  The readme that came with the game, says not, but is there a workaround?

3) How do you add things to the communal area once you have sims in?  EDIT - I guess that's boolProp aptBaseSpecificToolsDisabled false

4)  wtf is lotclassification & what's the point of the "changeLotClassification [low | middle | high]" cheat? 

5) Does all the Seasons garden stuff work on community lots?  Looks like it does to me, but then my apartments are possibly borked...
I built a big communal gardens at the back of one terrace including orchards and a greenhouse.  The playables could use communal compost bins and plant things in the communal garden and the landlord was sweeping leaves, weeding, watering and pruning. Is that because of an awesome hack or basic EAxis? I didn't get as far as harvest, but it was all working rather nicely!  Does the garden club look at the communal area or just the appartment?

1. Usually yes.  If the lot is on a foundation, then you may have to futz around a bit if you want to give the apartments a private backyard.  The process has been documented in a thread somewhere around here.  Keep in mind that the dividers that came with Pets are seen as fences/walls - again see existing threads on this issue.
2. No
3. It's better to add things when the lot is vacant.  Changing the zoning on occupied apartment lots is a VBT according to Pescado.
4. Lots classified as high get a better class of neighbours (e.g. socialites) and lots classed as low get a lower class of neighbours (e.g. mech-heads).
5. Haven't tried a communal garden yet on my apartments.

Thanks for the answers - particularly the VBT warning. I've deleted the entire hood and I'll start over again converting unnoccupied lots and package them up at all key points before adding sims for testing!  I hope the communal garden idea works.

So what is a terrace of retired folk?  They don't want either socialites or mech heads as neighbours!  Maybe I'd better go with medium.   What is the default setting?   

I can't say I like the social groups - none of them fit into my game - they're all too young.   Where are the golfers, the WI, the mothers&toddlers group, the AmDram or the local choir?  Young sims in weird clothes just look odd walking around my hoods.

Well, you can't do much about the actual groups they represent, but you can change their age and their clothing and pretend. Temporary selection and the use of the Sim Modder can make them any age you want and I prefer Dizzy's change anyones clothes mod for ingame appearance alteration but you can also use a clone from a dummy neighbourhood and Theo's Sim Surgery under SimPE to alter appearances.

I wonder if I could sell them some new clothes in an OFB business....  Thanks for the suggestion!  Changing clothes would certainly help.  The socialite would work a lot better in a twinset and pearls.

5) Does all the Seasons garden stuff work on community lots?  Looks like it does to me, but then my apartments are possibly borked...
I built a big communal gardens at the back of one terrace including orchards and a greenhouse.  The playables could use communal compost bins and plant things in the communal garden and the landlord was sweeping leaves, weeding, watering and pruning. Is that because of an awesome hack or basic EAxis? I didn't get as far as harvest, but it was all working rather nicely!  Does the garden club look at the communal area or just the appartment?

The Garden Club can't be called from an apartment lot, but community gardens do work rather nicely, as the landlord will water/weed for you when appropriate.  This is basic Eaxis, no hack needed.

As far as I know, that's normal game behaviour. I see no reason why gardening shouldn't work on apartment lots - luckily, EAxis, evidently, didn't either. They're notorious for simply disabling something in a given situation simply because they feel like it might be a bit more work to get it to co-operate. It's good to know that your garden is working properly.

You can, but Inge's teleporter + Pescado's clothingtool combo is much quicker.