I am in the process of sorting out custom content and I am installing some new lots a few at a time. I believe that I got the lots from MTS, most of my items come from here, and I am installing the lots using Sims2Pack Clean Installer. I am also installing the lots without the custom content at this time since I have much of my custom content already sorted and don't want to add duplicates. I installed 7 lots last night and when I went to look at them to see if I wanted to keep them on two of the lots I found that some of the Build Menu was greyed out. It was Walls, Windows, Doors, Fences, and maybe a few others. They were Residential lots. I have all the expansion packs and am on Win 10. Can someone help?

Have you tried to actually type the cheat code to change lot type to residential/community and reload this lot?

Sounds like they may be zoned incorrectly - as dorms or apartments, maybe. Try Anhaeyn's suggestion.

One was an apartment lot that wasn't zoned as apartment. I rezoned it as an apartment and it still had greyed out buttons. This is also happening to some hotels that I downloaded. One I do want to keep so I will trying rezoning it as different types and see if it help. Thanks so much.

Hotels and apartments do have greyed-out build mode buttons, from memory, because you aren’t supposed to renovate the shell of the building. You are allowed to redecorate though, so wallpapers and such are still accessible.

Zoning lots as apartment, dorm or hotel will cause the buttons to grey out. Rezone them as community or residential.

Apartments should be built as residential lots. Hotels should be built as community lots. Don't rezone the lot until you're sure that you're finished building it.

University dorms can be made fully editable with the following cheat:

boolprop dormspecifictoolsdisabled false

The dorm building cheat also works on hotels if you need it. Don't know about apartments.

Thank you all for your replies. I guess the easiest way to change hotels or apartments is to change the zoning to community or residential to do the changes I want, then rezone it to hotel or apartments. I don't want to make major changes, just some minor ones to make some things more playable for me. I haven't figured out how to sculpt the yard yet so that is the main reason I am downloading lots. So many players have uploaded very lovely yards.