Building a House from Scratch
Find a base. Get a LEGO table or one of those green LEGO platforms. This will be the floor of your house, as well as the yard, if you save room for one. If you build your house in two parts, on two different platforms, you can open it up to see what's inside by pulling the platforms apart.
Plan your house. Lay a bottom row of bricks as your "foundation," setting up locations for walls, doors, and the different rooms. Make a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom if your house is big enough. Think about what is in a real house and let this be your guide. For example, where should the fireplace go? If you are going to build one, you'll want to lay some bricks for the chimney during this planning stage. If you're planning to add a second floor, make sure to save plenty of room for stairs. It's probably a good idea to build them while you're still laying the foundation so you know how much room they'll take up.
Build the outside walls. Build up the exterior walls of your house, row by row. Hint: your walls will be sturdier if you don't just stack the same kind of brick, one on top of the next. Instead, offset your rows so the "seams" between the bricks don't all line up from one row to the next. Don't forget to leave spaces for the windows. You can leave these as empty spaces in your walls, or, if you have special window parts, install them. It will be harder to go back and add these later if you forget to put them in while you're building the walls.
Build the interior walls. Finish setting up the rooms in the house with walls inside.
Make the furniture. For the living room, you can make chairs and a TV. For the kitchen, you can make a counter, sink, oven, etc. For the bedroom, make a bed and a desk, and for the bathroom, make a toilet, shower, and sink. If you have them, you can make your furniture more realistic with specialty parts. LEGO makes pieces that look like keyboards, stoves, faucets, and more. These kinds of details can add a lot of realism to your house.
Add decorative touches. Once you've finished the basics, you can start adding decorative touches to make your house more unique. You can add tile floors or a patio using small flat pieces, add light fixtures or a ceiling fan, and landscape the yard with trees and flowers. Use your imagination and the parts you have available to make your house as interesting as you can.
Add a roof. Adding a roof should be the last step in building your house because once you put it on, it's harder to to move things around inside your house. You can get around this problem by making a removable roof. Attach it with hinged parts so you can pull it back, or just set it on top rather than locking it in place for easier access.
Play with your new house!
Building a House from a Pattern
Get a pattern. The LEGO sets you can buy in the store come with instructions for building the creation shown on the box, and LEGO Creator sets have 3 alternative house models you can build. Alternatively, if you have a lot of parts already and are looking for house patterns or just general ideas for your house, there are several websites that provide patterns for free. The official LEGO website includes some free patterns, like these instructions for a basic house as well as videos that show you how to build many different creations. Many other websites also provide patterns for houses at varying challenge levels. Letsbuilditagain.com features a mix of old LEGO manuals that originally came with different sets and creations made by visitors to the website. They have many house patterns, too.
Check your parts. The pattern will tell you which parts you need to make the house in the picture. Go through your LEGOs and make sure you have all the parts you need. Otherwise, you might get halfway through and find that you can't finish your house. Even if you are building from a set, it's a good idea to make sure all the parts are there before you start building. Occasionally parts are missing, which can be very frustrating to discover part way through the building process. If you check your parts at the beginning and something is missing, you can take the set back to the store and get a new one it before you start.
Follow the pattern. Go step by step through the instructions, laying your bricks in place exactly as shown in the instructions. Sometimes it's helpful to count the studs (the bumps on top of each LEGO brick) between bricks in the pictures to make sure you get the spacing right.
Customize if desired. Once you've finished the house, you can customize it with your own LEGO parts. Maybe it needs some trees or flowers, or even a garage. For example, you can turn your house into a winter scene by adding thin white pieces to the yard for snow, and making icicles out of clear pieces.
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