Basement Stair trouble...can't find anything like this

[Shinigamigurl]

So I'm in Dragon Valley and I'm using one of the premade lots- I need to make a basement for the nectar. I decided to forgo all the 'trouble' of trying to place it under my house since it has a foundation and I just wanted to do something 'quick'...so here I am 4 hours later and still no closer to being able to construct ANY basement stairs.

Problem: 'Can't be placed inside of a foundation' message keeps coming up but I'm no where near my actual house with an actual foundation...so there's actually NO foundation that it's trying to be placed through. I've tried every piece of free land in the backyard and still it says the same. I even tried putting a foundation over it and removing it...still nothing. It's giving me a headache.

I've already had mass amounts of problems with this house and I really LOVE what it looks like but it's driving me insane. Any ideas why this might be happening?

[KhaineGB]

I had the exact same problem.

Only way I found of doing it was going to one corner of the lot, building a 4x4 room as the basement and then put the stairs in the middle. That worked for some reason, but it had to be miles away from the house.

[Shinigamigurl]

   Well that sucks...I didn't make my lot very big so other than the spots that I've tried there's no other room. I even tried making the basement smaller but it looks like I'm going to have to build another lot. Oh well, thanks for the heads up anyway!

[Dellena]

Hold shift down when you're trying to place the stairs and see if that works.

[MeestorMark]

Before building another lot completely. See what happens if you move the sim family out through edit town, save the lot to the library and try replacing. Then move the sims back in and see if it works. I have had luck doing that.

I have also experienced where sometimes the game keeps telling me that when I am trying to put the stairs against one of the basement walls, but if I put them in the middle of the basement and not against the walls, it works okay.

[AnnDruvez]

Or you could just ctrl-shift-c and then use "moveobjects on" (without quotes). Be sure to turn it off after placing it, though, as you don't want to have pictures hanging in mid-air.