How much would it cost me to build a 4-story rustic mountain retreat?

[HenryCrawford]

Questions about building a Linden Home...

1: How much would it cost me to build a 4-story rustic mountain retreat? The four stories would include a first floor, a second floor, an attic, and a cellar.

2: Can I add stained glass windows to my house?

3: Can I add wind chimes to my house? If so, what styles and sizes of wind chimes can I buy?

4: Can I put a spiral staircase or two in my house?

5: My house needs to be large enough to hold the following rooms: A living room, a dining room, a kitchen, a study hall, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, an attic, a cellar, and possibly a garage. How can I make sure my house and the area it is built in will be large enough to hold these rooms?

6: Is it easy to build up such a rustic mountain house? The Linden Homes offered for free to paying subscribers are nice, but not what I am looking for in a Linden Home.

7: Can my house be on or near a tall mountain range? If so, how do I put it there?

[Theresa Tennyson]

"Linden Homes" are a specific type of dwelling that Linden Lab has created. What you're looking to do is build a regular SL house. It's theoretically possible that you could BUILD the entire house for free but the land it sits on will always require a continuing  outlay of money. The really important thing about having land is the number of "prims" it supports. A "prim" is the basic building block of SL, like atoms and molecules in RL. Every object is made up of one or more prims, and the more prims you can place on a piece of land the more it will cost you. To build a house like that you'll probably need a pretty big piece of land, and much larger than the "Linden Home" lots or the small plot you're elegible to get as a Premium Member. If you're a Premium Member you need to pay more each month for a larger lot. You can also rent land from someone else if you dont' want to get a premium membership. I'd suggest you look at the prefabricated houses that are available first to give you an idea how many prims a house the size you want would use.

Personally, I find the building system in SL to be painfully non-intuitive so it willl be quite a while before you'll be able to build something that ambitious.However, you can find all the items you want in your house SOMEWHERE in SL as prefabricated items.

Mountain ranges are available but not too common. To try to find mountain land go to your "world map" and select the box that says "Land Sale". Lots that are for sale will be highlighted in yellow. Then find an area with mountains and see if any lots are for sale. Large land structures like mountain ranges are easier to find on the Mainland (which is only for sale to "premium members" than they are in private estates.

[Chic Aeon]

1. Anything from absolutely free building it yourself and using free textures to many thousands of dollars for a premium prefab (readybuilt) home. You will need building skills. There are free classes to learn.

2. If you build it yourself, certainly. If you buy, make sure the house is MODIFY so that you can change the windows to your liking. You will need building skills. There are free classes to learn. OR find a house you like that already has stained glass designed into it.

3. Yes, any kind and size you want. Shop the Marketplace for windchimes or do a search inworld. There are lots of makers of windchimes.

4.Yes, but if you are purchasing a prefab it would be best to buy one with that feature already included. Retrofitting would be difficult in most cases. If you build it yourself, just incorporate it into the design.

5. When you buy a readymade house it will tell you the "footprint" of the house -- the size that it takes up on the ground. Just be sure that your parcel has enough space for it. Oftentimes you can get a footprint demo to test on a plot of land. You also need lots of PRIMS to furnish your house. I suggest that you would probably want a quarter of a homestead sim or a 1/16 of a regular sim for your home.

6.No, it is not easy. It takes a long time to get building skills to a good looking level. It is, however, fun for lots of folks.

7. There are lots of quarter sim homestead lands to lease (little or no down payment and you just pay rent) that have mountains built into two sides for privacy and ocean on the other two. That should ideal for what you seem to want.  Once you purchase your land (again it isn't really YOURS if you buy estate land - you are just renting) you can put your purchased or prebuilt home on it.

So the bottom line is that you can have just about anything you want in Second Life. It either takes time or cost money and sometimes both , but getting there is the best part.

 

Good luck.

[Lindal Kidd]

Well, first, "Linden Home" is a term specific to those free homes you find too small for your needs.

1.  Just building the house costs you nothing, unless you buy parts like scripted doors for it, buy textures, or even buy a complete pre-built house.  So...you can buy some or all of the things for your house, or you can make the whole thing yourself from scratch.

2.  Yes.  You can make stained glass window textures, or find many stained glass textures or pre-made windows for purchase.

3.  Yes.  I have some pretty ones at my house.  IM me in world to come see and listen to them.  You can search for wind chimes, or any product, on the SL Marketplace or using the in-world Search tool.

4.  Yes.  Spiral stairs are tricky to build, so you may want to get pre-made ones.

5.  This is the key question.  Your house is made up of geometric primitive shapes, or "prims" for short.  Generally, the bigger and more complicated the object, the more prims it will have.  The amount of prims you can have on a land parcel is determined by how large it is.  From what you are describing, I think you will want to look for a parcel of land that is 4096 square meters, and can support up to 937 prims.  Tier for a parcel of this size on the mainland will run $25 USD per month (plus the initial purchase cost.  You generally buy the land from another resident).  You can also get a similar parcel on a private estate.  The monthly cost should be roughly the same, but you won't need a premium membership.

5a.  The cellar is the tricky bit.  You can't build underground in SL, because the land is only one-sided.  There are, however, workarounds.

6.  Learn to build by visiting the self paced tutorials at The Ivory Tower Library of Primitives.  I have a large 3 level A frame house at Masocado.  You are welcome to come by and see it.

7.  Yes.  Find mountainous land for sale using Search.

[Ariel Vuissent]

You can't build a Linden home. The options you've seen are the options you have. A Linden home is a premade home on already chosen land. Basically, you're paying to rez your stuff in the home and be able to kick other people out.

You can rent land on which to rez or build your own home. First off, building and rezzing are different. Building means you're going to create your own objects, resize them, move them, link them, texture them, and eventually end up with - in this case - a house. Rezzing means you buy something someone else has already made and drag it from your inventory onto the ground. If you buy a premade home that is modifiable, you can change it however you want, including adding and subtracting things.

Building it would cost you time and probably some $L to upload textures and/or purchase some premade building materials. Rezzing it would cost you whatever the cost is of whatever home you find that you like. Both will cost the price of land, although to build it from scratch you might be able to use a large sandbox. When you're done, though, you need somewhere to put it. You'll want a decent-sized plot, as it sounds like your dream home is fairly large. If you want to build/rez this on mainland, click here for the tier chart. (You'll need a Premium account to start with, then you need to make sure you have enough space and prims for what you want.) If you want to rent some private land, look around for your ideal plot, and again make sure it has enough space and prims.

I would guess that the land will cost you at least $30 USD per month, if you rent privately. For a premade house, prices vary drasticallly, so it's impossible to say.

To make sure your land is large enough to fit your house, you'll need to look at the house's footprint, meaning the amount of space it takes up and the amount of prims it uses. Prims are the basic building blocks of objects in SL. Generally, the larger and more elaborate the object, the more prims has. And of course, you need not only enough prims to place the house, but also to furnish and decorate it. All houses should say in the description how much space they take up and how many prims they're made of. Because you have such a specific dream home in mind, perhaps you should find the house first, then find the land to put it on.

To edit your house once you have it, first make sure it's modifiable. Then go shopping for the things you want - wind chimes, spiral staircases, stained glass windows, etc. You can edit your house, edit linked part, remove the things you want to replace, and add in the things you want to replace them with. Some thing may require significant modification.

It is usually easy to rez a premade home. It is not easy to build one if you have never done it before.

Your house can be wherever you want it to be - find land for sale (mainland) or rent (private land), find the perfect plot for rent, and rez your house there.

Again, you cannot build a Linden home. You can, however, build or rez on non-Linden-home mainland that you buy and pay tier on, or private land that you rent.