It was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened.  Venus has now been improved greatly and I'm finally figuring my way through the Create-A-Style possibilities to create rotten-wood windows and rusting sinks. 

At first, I'd been a bit uncertain about whether I liked this new direction for The Sims after being used to having full design control over my textures, but I'm achieving better results with the Create-A-Style tool, and many more of them too.  I used the same textures repeatedly in Sims 2, but there's no need for that limitation now.

This is a brilliant innovation by Electronic Arts - one I'd totally under-estimated.  I've certainly been vocal enough about wanting to add my own textures, but, with this tool, I'm not sure it's all that necessary (though I do miss customised terrain paints).  I just need to stop spending hours painting individual objects and get on with building something!!!