How to Build a House in Skyrim

Building a Skyrim house is a little puzzle on its own. Let’s decode this in the simplest way possible.

Straightaway, building a house is different from buying a house in Skyrim. And evidently, it needs more effort, especially in sourcing (a shortcut is discussed later) the required materials.

But constructing your own has its own perks, with customizations and expansions any time you have the resources.

Notably, the first thing you’ll want is a land plot.

There are a few locations, including The Pale, Falkreath, etc., where you can talk to the respective Jarl, complete a quest, and proceed with the land ownership.

We’ll proceed with the Falkreath hold, as this one is quicker.

So, once you’re at the Falkreath, locate the Jarl’s longhouse to meet Siddgeir, the current Jarl, and ask for some work.

He will request to kill the bandit leader at Bilegultch Mine. This is a simple quest to slay a few bandits, and a fine bow and arrow will be enough.

Subsequently, meet the Jarl to get the reward and start the land purchase. He’ll direct you to his steward, Nenya, from whom you can get one for 5000 gold.

Importantly, this starts with you asking to buy a house but being told to buy land instead since no house is up for sale in Falkreath.

Next, you can travel to the property location, which is Lakeview Manor, northeast of Falkreath.

The default set of tools present at the site are:

• Drafting table: Used to select the items to create
• Chest: Has some basic supplies
• Carpenter’s workbench: For primary construction
• Anvil: For crafting some of the building materials

So now that we are at the construction site and have the necessary tools, let’s get started.

Building a House in Skyrim

It begins with the drafting table to select what to create. In this case, the first will be a small house layout, which is the simplest one, needing the smallest amount of supplies.

After creating the plan, the next tool to make use of is the carpenter’s bench.

A small house construction has the following components:

• Foundation
• Wall Framing
• Walls
• Floor
• Roof Framing
• Roof
• Door

That’s just for reference; you don’t have to memorize anything. They will come progressively as you construct with the carpenter’s bench.

The total number of building materials required for this minimal construction is:

You have everything you need to build a small house right there.

The basic supplies chest has 30 clay, one corundum ingot, six iron ingots, and 30 quarried stones. In addition, you can find 20 swan logs piled nearby (they don’t show up in the inventory).

So, all you have to do is use the anvil to craft iron fittings, hinges, nails, and a lock, as you already have the raw materials.

However, the easiest way out is using console commands using the item codes listed above.

For instance, press ~ in-game and type player.additem 0300306c X to add X quarried stones in the inventory.

Here, I replaced the XX at the beginning of the item code with my DLC code, 03. DLC codes for Dragonborn, Hearthfire, and Dawnguard are 02, 03, and 04, respectively.

As you build the house’s components at the carpenter’s bench, your house will gradually start building.

Now, this completes the construction of a small house:

Still, this is just bare-bones construction with no additional rooms. Basically, it’s just a hall.

A fully-fledged house will have you return to the drafting table to create more plans, then use the carpenter’s bench to take note of the required building materials, source them, and build the expansions.

As stated, the console commands are the quickest method to grab the building stuff. So here are a few more codes for the items you might need for the expansions:

However, there are traditional (and sometimes boring) methods to source all these things for the no-shortcuts builder inside you.

For instance, quarried stones are all over Skyrim. However, not all allow you to mine them. It’s some shiny ones that look a bit different from their connecting rocks.

And you’ll need a pickaxe to get started if one isn’t placed nearby.

Still, searching for them isn’t fun. So better, one can turn to the Skyrim fandom wiki and search for all the possible locations for specific building materials.

Furnishing Your Skyrim Home

No matter how much you expand your house, it remains empty until you make some arrangements.

The fastest way to make your house look habitable is to use cheats to source materials and use the workbench inside every area of the house.

These workbenches differ from those outside the house (carpenter’s workbench). The option to add workbenches in every room of the house appears in the drafting table menu, and you can remove them once done with the furnishing part.

While most of the hard work lies on your shoulders, it’s best to hire a steward for the upkeep. Particularly for Falkreath, you can talk to Jarl and ask if there is anything else he needs, and he opens up about the vacant thane title.

This will entail helping at least three Falkreath citizens. While you can try this your own way, I recommend asking:

• Mathies of Corpselight Farm
• Hert at Half Moon Mill
• Thadgeir at Dengeir’s House

These won’t take much time, and after helping them, you can ask Jarl, who will announce you the Thane of Falkreath and offer a housecarl, Rayya.

Finally, you can ask Rayya to become your steward.

Though a steward can’t do everything, I got help arranging a carriage, cow, horse, basic furnishing, building materials, etc.

Asking your steward to do things needs a lot of money. You already know the usual way of earning gold, but as a shortcut, use console command player.additem 0000000F X, for “X” amount of gold.

Wrap Up!

So this was a short guide about building a Skyrim house.

It needs a lot of work, agreed, but crafting everything has its own satisfaction for many. As a reminder, you can use a Skyrim house for storing your weapons and living with your spouse and children.

PS: Among many entertaining things, being a werewolf in Skyrim presents unmatched thrill and a unique gameplay experience I strongly suggest trying firsthand.