Sorry for the newb question, but what is the correct way to save changes made to one of the hearthfire basemants or main homes? Do I start out by duplicating the said cell and saving that as my new esp? Then make the modifications I want?

Or can I modify the vanilla main home or basemant and then just save it with a different name?

Some guidance would be appreciated, thank you

Hearthfire is a .esm file, so you can just make your changes in the Vanilla basemant, and then save it as a new .esp file It's exactly the same as if you were editing Skyrim.esm.

Thank you for the reply