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I asked - and got permission from - lesi123 a long time ago on whether I could make a buildable version to her excellent Hidden Hideouts. The idea came and went, and has been resurrected several times, but I've often put it off becuase it's so daunting, and would take away time from my main projects.
However, I've been working from a more modular approach since yesterday, in the sense that I tried to make some new clutter that would be easy to create variations of, and would make building each home a lot quicker if I keep myself disciplined. So, for example, the enchanting and alchemy stations will probably look very similar when used in a hidden hideout, but with small variations in regards to surrounding clutter items.
The aesthetic of the homes - very poor/beggar/nomad/outcast - lend themselves to a very utilitarian approach with relatively little decorative flair, and since they are not "meant to be" fully fledged homes, I think I'll be less likely to get bogged down by adding a ton of features.
The current goal-plan is to make these homes when I have time for it, and feel like doing it, and with no promises that all homes will be equally detailed (they won't) or that even all of them will be done.
I have further added the limitation that I can't use custom textures, and instead try to come up with interesting solutions and aesthetics by manipulating meshes. So far it's been both challenging and fun to do so. The open enchanting book, for example, uses vanilla empty pages, and on top of those, I put copies of those pages that uses the dragon-alphabet texture found in dungeons folder, and the enchanting symbols found in the clutter folder, and colored them both slightly to better look like printed items.
Because this particular home is so small, I have added a trigger that switches between alchemy and enchanting stations (and their respective clutter items). In terms of overall functionality, this home has cooking, baking, tanning, flour-grinding, enchanting and alchemy, which will probably be as extravagant as one of these hidden hideouts can be (not all will be as fully featured).
I am currently working from the Deep Immersion version, which probably lends itself to a build-your-own-home approach (some homes have enemies you need to clear out before you build, for example). I am using the merged version, but it might make more sense to try to migrate the changes I've already made on to individual esps, so I can release these make-overs as I complete them, as opposed to doing all of them before release.
Again, no promises that all will be made, but the current state of the Wolf Den has taken me about 2 days, which is quite speedy for me. I plan to offer some options for customization (changing textile colors, for example) but they will be very restricted, and vastly less rich than with my main homes. They will also not be as detailed, but hopefully I can wrangle something interesting out of each of these, as I find the time.
Cheers.
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If I'm going to procrastinate project A with a side-project, it's better that the side-project is differentiated from project A in terms of scope. So far, I've had a habit of starting a new, ambitious and complex home whenever I get tired of the current project, and that's not really solving or alleviating any stress; it just presents the same problem with a different hue.
So, these homes might be a better distraction because they are not meant to be permanent homes, so there is - and more importantly, cannot be - the ambition that they should accomodate all needs a player would want.
So , there's a lot of freedom in that, and in trying to do as much as possible with the smallest amount of material, which often leads to new innovative ideas.
After taking a walk I've decided to renege ( a bit) on my "no custom texture"-rule. The open book looks unacceptably awful, and I'd also like to make use of my lit-incense-stick texture and the texture I use for wine/coffee/beer in an open container (depending on coloring).
So while I'll be using custom textures, there will probably not be more than 5 of them spread over all the homes. A big part of the fun in filling Wolf Den has come from not being able to introduce new textures, but make due with what vanilla dictates.
It's also been a great opportunity for me to dig through my work-folder for half-done ideas that may never otherwise see the light of day. My work-folder currently has 1.7 gigs of meshes (7.724 files), and while there's a ton of redundancy in there (endless iterations of the same idea saved with very minor changes), and all the files that are connected to my house mods (roughly between 300 and 500 meshes), there are still a lot of half-baked, kinda-interesting-stuff that I've forgotten about over the years.
So, I might as well make use of them here (when applicable).
And you know, half the pleasure in using little "starter huts" is that no one should expect them to have every single amenity a large house has. Any new solutions you come up with to utilize space in clever ways, as you do so well, will make these shacks seem like little gems.
Good luck to you - I hope you enjoy yourself!