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Build guide

Paralives townhouse build: a terraced home in 16 steps

Paralives has no terraced lot type, so a townhouse is a single residence built narrow, tall and flush against its neighbours. These sixteen steps follow two British townhouse speed builds — grid off, walls placed free of it, a stairwell that decides the whole plan, then dormers, chimneys and front steps.

Start the walkthroughApartment build
Angled Paralives Photo Mode view of a finished British-style townhouse block on a corner plot, with slate mansard roofs, dormer windows, chimney stacks and a pharmacy shopfront across the cobbled street
The finished terraced block at golden hour, framed in Photo Mode: three storeys, a mansard roof and a shared street wall. Every step below links to the moment it happens in the video.

The short version

There is no townhouse lot type in Paralives: residences are the only residential lot in the game, and every residence is a single home. What you can do is build one narrow, three storeys high and hard against its neighbours — which is exactly what a terraced house is. These steps follow two builders who did just that, from an empty wedge of paving to a Photo Mode reveal down a shared street.

  • Turn the grid off before the first wall — snapping is what stops a townhouse sitting flush.
  • Hold the no-snap modifier to push walls, columns and trim right up to the plot line.
  • Fix the stairwell first: on a narrow footprint the stairs decide every other room.
  • Roof pieces clip freely into each other, and a chimney dropped on a roof just sits there.
  • Wallpaper and floor finishes cost nothing — spend the budget on structure and furniture.
  • One builder finished at P38,838 and called it playable for a three-or-four-Para household.

The controls this guide leans on

Every technique below is base build mode. These are the bindings that make a narrow lot work — the full list lives on the controls page.

GToggle the grid
Alt (hold) / Option (hold)Disable snapping
Shift (hold)Move an object vertically
* (numpad)Toggle the advanced transform widget
Page UpGo up a floor
Page DownGo down a floor
Ctrl + Shift + C / Cmd + Shift + COpen the cheat console (alternate)
SETMONEY <amount>Set the household funds when you just want to build

The plot

Wall a narrow lot flush with the neighbours

A townhouse lives or dies on its street wall. Both builds here start on a tight paved plot hemmed in by taller neighbours, and both start the same way: drawing walls free of the grid so the facade lands on the same plane as the house either side.

  1. 1

    Draw the first wall free of the grid

    Both builders open the same way: Wall Placement Mode on a plot barely wider than the house itself. The highlighted segment runs along the pavement edge between two existing walls, and that line is the one the whole facade has to match. ItsAnitaa is blunt about it — if you are building between other houses, do not leave the grid on, or nothing will sit flush with the neighbours.

    Paralives Wall Placement Mode drawing a cyan-highlighted wall segment on a narrow paved town lot between two neighbouring stone walls
    A plot barely wider than the house: the first wall sets the street line.Watch at 0:03
  2. 2

    Repeat the footprint on every floor

    A terraced house is the same rectangle three times over, so the upper walls copy the ground floor almost exactly. Only one elevation ever changes — the flank is already somebody else's building. The highlighted segment on this top floor is a bedroom being divided from the stair landing.

    Top-down view of a Paralives townhouse upper floor with timber floors, a highlighted wall segment dividing a bedroom from the stair landing and a shared party wall on one side
    Same rectangle, three times: upper floors inherit the ground-floor footprint.Watch at 7:21
  3. 3

    Use half walls for cornices and parapets

    Half-Wall Placement Mode is the tool behind the thick white border that runs under a townhouse roofline. ItsAnitaa built exactly that by placing half walls along the top of the facade and painting them white — a cornice assembled entirely from shipped tools. The same low wall makes parapets, room dividers and stair guards on an open landing.

    Paralives Half-Wall Placement Mode placing a low white wall along the edge of a timber-floored upper level of a narrow townhouse
    The cornice trick: a half wall painted white, run along the top of the wall.Watch at 4:12
  4. 4

    Paint the floors last, and for free

    Floor Painting Mode opens a grid of timber, tile and stone swatches. ItsAnitaa points out that none of it costs anything — wallpaper and flooring are free in Paralives whichever swatch you pick, so the budget question is only ever about structure and furniture. On a narrow plan that freedom is worth having: one wood finish can run the full depth of all three floors.

    Paralives Floor Painting Mode with a grid of timber swatches open beside a brick-bond wood floor laid across the narrow footprint of a townhouse
    Flooring is free, so the whole plan can be one continuous wood finish.Watch at 12:28

Getting upstairs

Stack three storeys on one footprint

There is no land to spread across, so the plan goes vertical. The staircase is the decision that shapes everything else — its run, its turn, and the hole it needs in each floor above it.

  1. 5

    Come in off the street by a flight of steps

    The defining move of a British terraced house is the raised entrance: a short external flight up from the pavement to a front door that deliberately does not sit at street level. The staircase catalogue has the pieces, and ItsAnitaa wanted exactly that — a staircase going up to the front door — because it is what the London rows she copied actually do.

    Paralives staircase catalogue open beside a short flight of concrete front steps leading up to the entrance of a townhouse on a narrow cobbled street
    The raised entrance: steps from the pavement up to the front door.Watch at 0:48
  2. 6

    Fine-tune the stair run with the placement menu

    Right-clicking a placed object opens the full list of placement options — the same menu the keyboard shortcuts drive. On a narrow lot the useful entries are the rotate options and the advanced transform widget: a stair that is a few centimetres too long for its well can be turned and nudged rather than rebuilt. The placed piece's own tooltip here reads Wiki.

    Paralives right-click placement menu open over a timber staircase with the rotate gizmo, listing No Snap, Move Vertically, Rotate 90 Degrees and Toggle Advanced Widget
    Every placement option in one menu — rotate and nudge instead of rebuilding.Watch at 3:36
  3. 7

    Turn the stair to buy back floor area

    Two straight flights meeting at a half-landing are the compact answer to three storeys on a small footprint: the run doubles back on itself instead of needing a full-depth stair hall. ItsAnitaa wanted a U-shaped stair running the entire height of her house and could not get it to work, but the U-turn at the lower level survived into the finished build.

    Two timber staircase flights meeting at a half-landing inside a Paralives townhouse, seen from above with the staircase catalogue open beside the plan
    A U-turn at the landing buys back the floor a straight run would eat.Watch at 3:48
  4. 8

    Give the top floor a railing, not more roof

    Under a mansard the top floor is the awkward one — low eaves, dormer headroom, and a strip of roof you could stand on if it were safe. Running railings along the opening turns it into a roof terrace, and the Interior Doors catalogue supplies the glazed doors that make it a room rather than a hatch. It is the only outdoor space a townhouse can add without more land.

    Paralives top floor of a townhouse with timber flooring and black balcony railings along a roof opening, with the Interior Doors catalogue open beside it
    The top floor earns its keep as a railed roof terrace.Watch at 10:48

The street wall

Dormers, chimneys and a front door you climb to

The terraced look is a roofline and an entrance: a mansard pitched steeply enough to cut dormers into, a stack or two, columns framing the door, and a short flight of steps up from the pavement.

  1. 9

    Frame the entrance with columns

    Molding Mode is where trim, columns and edging live. Both builds use it to frame the doorway and to draw a vertical line down the facade, which is what makes a tall thin house read as designed rather than squeezed. ItsAnitaa outlined her whole build in columns, again placing them free of the grid so each one sat exactly on the wall face.

    Paralives Molding Mode with the column catalogue open beside a townhouse entrance where a rotate gizmo positions a column next to the front door
    Molding Mode: columns and trim to frame a tall, thin facade.Watch at 6:00
  2. 10

    Pitch a mansard steep enough for dormers

    The terraced roofline is a steep mansard with dormers cut into it, and that slope is what makes the top floor usable rather than a crawl space. From this angle you can see why: the roof falls away on both sides toward the pavement, so the dormers do all the daylighting that no side window can, because there are no side windows.

    Finished Paralives townhouse facade seen from above, showing a slate mansard roof with a dormer window, a curved bay roof and Molding Mode trim along the street
    Mansard plus dormers: the roofline that defines a terraced street.Watch at 5:36
  3. 11

    Clip roof pieces together

    Roof pieces go down freely and clip into each other, which is how a dormer gets built into a slope that is already placed. ItsAnitaa singles this out as the part of the roof tools that genuinely works well. The one thing she wants added is for a roof passing through a wall to stop showing on the inside of the room below it.

    Paralives Roof trims catalogue open over a slate mansard roof where a dormer and a small stack have been clipped into the slope beside a chimney
    Roofs clip together, so a dormer can be cut in after the slope exists.Watch at 8:12
  4. 12

    Drop a chimney straight onto the roof

    A chimney needs no support and no flue chase: place one on a roof slope and it sits there. ItsAnitaa calls this out as one of the features she likes — you can just put the chimney on top of a roof and it will sit nicely. On a terraced roofline a stack or two is most of the character, and it costs nothing to try a few positions.

    Top-down Paralives view of a townhouse roofline with a slate roof panel being positioned, a stack at its edge, clipped dormers and the roof trim catalogue open
    A chimney dropped on the slope: no flue chase, no supports.Watch at 9:42
  5. 13

    Close the front with area railings and planters

    The last few centimetres of a townhouse are all street: railings across the light well in front of the steps, a gate, and whatever planting will fit. Space is the whole problem — ItsAnitaa had to shrink her planter area just to squeeze in a wheelie bin, and tucked it away from the door rather than leave it facing the street. Bay windows are the other half of the answer: they project over the pavement instead of taking floor area from inside.

    Street-level view of a Paralives townhouse entrance with white front steps, black area railings across the light well and a highlighted bay window beside a pharmacy shopfront
    Railings, steps and a bay window: the last metre is all street.Watch at 7:48

Three floors of rooms

Fit a whole life into a narrow plan

ItsAnitaa's finished layout is the test of whether the shape works as a home: a bedroom with an en-suite and a study below, all the living rooms on the main floor, and two bedrooms plus a bathroom above.

  1. 14

    Put all the living rooms on one floor

    The main floor here carries the kitchen, the dining table and the living room in a single narrow run, and ItsAnitaa explains exactly why: she did not want to be going up and down stairs just to watch television. She had expected to push the living room down to the lower floor and found it fitted. The dark worktop runs along two walls and the stair rises straight through the middle of the plan.

    Top-down view of a narrow Paralives townhouse kitchen with black worktops, an oven and a sink run along two walls, with the stair balustrade at the far end
    Kitchen, dining and living on one floor — no stair-climbing for the sofa.Watch at 15:17
  2. 15

    Squeeze a full bathroom into a leftover corner

    A basin, a WC and a window fit into the space left between the stair and the party wall — the room that was never going to be anything else. ItsAnitaa's lower-floor bedroom has its own en-suite, and this one serves the two bedrooms above, which is roughly how most terraced houses end up arranged once the useful rooms have taken the good floor area.

    Compact Paralives upstairs bathroom seen from above with a vanity basin, a wall-mounted WC and brown floor tiles, beside an open rug catalogue
    One basin, one WC, one window: the leftover corner becomes a bathroom.Watch at 18:40
  3. 16

    Plan for the room that has to be smallest

    The top floor gets the smallest bedrooms, and this one is doing two jobs at once: a double bed and a crib pushed against the panelling. ItsAnitaa's finished house is three bedrooms with a crib in the parents' room and two bathrooms, with the main bedroom and a toddler's room sharing the upper floor and a bathroom between them.

    Paralives top-floor bedroom with a double bed, a white crib against the panelled wall and a teal rug, with a floor-rug swatch catalogue open beside it
    Three bedrooms plus a crib in the main one; the top floor does the rest.Watch at 18:02

What nobody has pinned down

Two builders can show you how a townhouse gets made; neither can tell you where the game's limits are. These are the questions this page deliberately leaves open rather than estimates an answer for.

  • A published maximum number of storeys. Both houses here run three floors plus a set-back top level, and neither video hits a ceiling on height — but no source documents a hard cap.
  • Whether the stairwell flooring problem ItsAnitaa hit on her second floor still behaves the same way in build 0.1.8b. Her build was filmed before the current patch.
  • The starting-funds figure. The builder quotes P30,000 for a single Para on the default difficulty, which matches one wiki reading — our money guide flags the same number as disputed.
  • Whether a dedicated terraced or apartment lot type is scheduled. Lot and world editing sit on the roadmap with no dates attached.

Paralives townhouse FAQ

Is there a townhouse or terraced lot type in Paralives?
Not as a lot type: residences in Early Access are single-family homes, and lot and world editing tools are still on the roadmap. A townhouse is therefore a build style you apply to a normal residence lot — narrow, vertical and flush with its neighbours. The same boundary applies to apartments, and our apartment build guide covers that version of the problem.
How do you build on a narrow lot in Paralives?
Turn the grid off first, then place walls free of it so the facade lands on the same plane as the houses either side. Both builders in this guide say the grid is what ruins a terraced row: leave it on and nothing sits flush. Hold the no-snap modifier to push walls, columns and trim right up against the plot boundary, and use half walls to build the cornice line along the top of the facade.
How many floors can you stack in Paralives?
No hard maximum has been published. Both townhouses here use three living floors plus a top level set back behind the mansard, stepping between them with the floor-up and floor-down controls, and neither build ran into a height limit. Treat three or four storeys as comfortably available and anything taller as untested.
Do you need a mod to build a townhouse?
No. Everything in these sixteen steps is base build mode — walls, half walls, stairs, roof pieces, moldings, columns and railings all ship with the game. Mods only come in if you want somebody else's finished house: both builds shown here were published to the Steam Workshop, so you can drop the whole terrace into your save instead of drawing it. Our workshop guide covers installing them.
Why can't I delete the floor under my stairs?
One builder hit exactly this and could not work around it. She wanted a U-shaped stair running the full height of the house, which needs the flooring removed beneath it on the upper level so Paras do not bump their heads — but the game would not let her delete that floor on the second storey. Her workaround was to keep the U-turn only on the lower floor and run a straight flight elsewhere. It is an Early Access limitation rather than anything you are doing wrong.

Keep building

Apartment build

The other answer to having no terraced lot type: an open-plan family apartment on a normal residence, with the lot-type boundary spelled out in full.

Half walls

The tool behind every cornice, parapet and room divider in this guide, covered end to end with its own worked examples.

House ideas

Every house type we have built a guide for, from tiny houses to mansions, with the lot each one wants.

Related guides

Stairs

U-shaped and L-shaped staircases, the ones the narrow plan depends on, built step by step.

Roofs

Mansards, dormers and roof trims in depth — the facade work summarised here starts there.

Foundations

Setting a footprint on a tight or sloped plot before the first wall goes up.

Tiny house

The same problem with no vertical escape: fitting a whole household onto the smallest lot in the game.

Cheats and commands

The money command used to test a build this size, plus the console that takes it.