User blog comment:Faedinout/Hearthfire Home Building--Things I Wish I'd Known/@comment-4057437-20130807060042

All the homes come with the option to put two single beds and one king sized bed upstairs. That doesn't allow having adopted children there but does provide a place for the steward and housecarl to sleep (and they do use the two single beds).

The bedroom with the two childres's beds is required to move adopted children into a home. The housecarl and steward won't sleep in the children's beds. The King-sized bed in the bedroom is not necessary and can be omitted.

The towers allow easy access to the roof and the hawk's nest there. (The hawk's eggs don't seem to respawn, but the feathers do.) The view is from a tower is great, also. The alchemy tower has many hard to find ingredients such as pearls that respawn regularly.

Other than having the wrap-around deck, we have found the store room useless, so we no longer build one.

As Alchemists, we really like the greenhouse, and have one on two of our mansions (we put the children's room on Lakeview because the children like living there much better.

Glass and straw have to be bought or found, the glass smithing perk does not unlock the ability to craft it. (A source of sand would be required and there are none in Skyrim.)

We put very few stuffed animals on our walls.

We like the kitchen both for baking and as a source of salmon roe that respawns regularly.

We found the Armory redundant.

We always furnish our homes ourselves (crafting the iron materials is a good way to raise the Dragonborn's smothing skill).