turning this hole in my wall into a secret miniature house

My weird is going to show just a little bit but today we are working on turning a hole in my wall into something cute and miniature and magical. So this idea actually came to fruition because I think it was my dad actually who was over at my house he saw this hole in my wall which is where a joist used to go before my home renovations and I of course was just gonna fill it in and try to make it look seamless and he was like is that where your mouse lives something along those lines and now we're here about to DIY some miniature sh**. So on Pinterest we've seen them called mouse houses or fairy homes or if they're in a bookcase a book nook but essentially they're all just these really adorable miniature magical worlds where some little tiny thing or creature maybe lives and on TikTok we see a lot about miniature doll houses there's lots of accounts about that I'm definitely on the miniature side of TikTok these days but aside of Pinterest and social media and TikTok we see miniature dioramas or model worlds used for a variety of reasons they use them in filming as film sets a destination in Toronto actually just opened up called Little Canada they're used in architecture and design and one of my favorites is fine art and there are individuals that have been doing miniature art for years artists such as Jill Orlov, Joshua Smith, Karen Collins, Michael Yurkovic and one of my favorites Tetsuya Tanaka. I just think that it is so imaginative and just interesting to dissect and look at and think about. So when trying to figure out what design to do for this space I definitely took to Pinterest. I was thinking about maybe like a garden area or an art studio or maybe I go super sleek and modern for a little home or maybe I lean something more along the style of my own home. What I did decide to go with is kind of a living room setup that leans a little cottagey. Okay so I decided to tackle this like I would any other makeover so I created a to-do list and a mood board. This is kind of the space inspo lots of little odds and ends definitely very cozy for my little creature that lives here. And now that I know what style I'm going to go for I just needed to decide what scale. In my brief research of the dollhouse miniature world I learned that scale is obviously very important to making sure that everything looks cohesive and it looks like a true miniature space. So two very typical scales are half scale and full scale. Half scale means that one foot is going to equal half an inch on your small scale size and full scale would mean that one foot equals one full inch. It's also written like this 1 to 24 or 1 to 12 and to put this in perspective if I were to get a front door for my little home here a full scale door would be this size while a half scale door would be about this size. I'm gonna go with half scale so I can fit more homey stuff and decor inside my space. Now I didn't really know where to start so I thought the best first stop would be one of the only dollhouse stores in Toronto. They had lots of miniature items definitely a little bit more for full scale than for half scale but overall things were just a little bit expensive. I picked up a front door and a little wine glass but it looks like I might have to DIY a lot of the pieces. Next I went to a train and hobby store but they didn't have anything large enough. I was definitely feeling a little discouraged until I checked on Facebook marketplace. Now there weren't a lot of dollhouse or miniature listings but I did see that Karen was selling multiple dollhouses that she assembled from a kit online. They were listed for only $40 and they had lots of pieces in them that I could use to build out my house. This was an amazing deal as one light were to cost me more than the entire cost of this whole house and it comes with lighting already. Okay dollhouse secured. She had lots of options as you can see and she said these were COVID projects. I didn't want to tell Karen that I was going to repurpose these but really cute really cute and has a little bit of everything that I need. Like this one's so cute. I love this chair. You see that one chair? I love it. There's even a little patio. Wait why am I obsessed? Okay also these came with lights. Hold on where is it? Batteries included. Like look at this little Are you kidding me? I'm over the moon. Good morning I am here in the office today and I am ready to start building all the elements for my mouse house. So first I created cardboard templates for everything in the space like the walls and the flooring and then transferred those into MDF so that I could build on them. So starting with the fireplace I'm using a construction adhesive to glue down the pebbles that I have and then I'm using some grout that we already had here at the office with some gray paint in it to tint it and I slathered that all in the cracks and just like real grout I used water and a sponge to wipe off excess. For the inside light up part of the fireplace I will need to take apart the little home so we'll come back to that later. For the front of the house to cover up the hole I built this MDF front of home and I'm prying it because I found that it helped when sticking on a really fine layer of grout. In the wet grout I can draw in little brick details using a ruler and a utility knife and oh my god I'm so obsessed. Okay and the final front step of the front of home is to paint that front door that I bought the actual color of my real front door. Moving right along to flooring I knew that for this one I wanted to use wooden stir sticks. I chose ones with a nice grain and then cut them to a couple inches in size so that I can glue them down to my MDF in a staggered design just like real hardwood. Once glued down and cut I'm going to stain them. I'm using Ipswich pine stain for a rich but still subtle color. Okay it is time to move on to the miniature dollhouse that I purchased and strip it for parts. I'm just going to start by taking out all the elements that I could even potentially find useful in my mouse house and I was definitely overjoyed about all the lighting in this space because I will be using all of that and honestly doing mini Ips cycles with so many of these items starting with the couch. So I don't have room for a sectional in my little house so my thought is to cut it apart and make it into more of a loveseat. I'm not too worried about the fabric here because I do not love the color and I will be reupholstering it anyways with felt. I haven't done much felting before but my plan is to just felt this beautiful orange color right onto the existing fabric. Okay so spoiler this is not really working out for me so I'm just going to make a pillow instead and use some fabric that we already have to reupholster the couch which means taking it all apart and individually wrapping all of the sections. Okay it is time for a little DIY break. I'm heading to Michael's because I know that they have some miniature items that I always peep but I never have a reason to actually buy except for actually that one time oh and that that other time. Anyways like I suspected their miniature items are actually more full scale than half scale so I can't really use any of them for my space although I think that this tree could work as maybe a Christmas tree and even though I want to lean into like the rawness of the little hole just a little bit I do think that these textured papers can make great wallpapers so I'm going to grab the scalloped shell design and paint it this kind of unflattering color but I think it's a fun accent and will look really cozy and vintage in the little room. Okay I feel like we're slowly working our way down to smaller elements. Next up is an anthropology inspired mirror. I grabbed these little mirrors from Michael's and I'm using my glass scorer and snapper to cut the mirror to a smaller size. Then I used some globby hot glue and gold paint in the hopes of creating like an intricate mirror frame. Obviously we need the fire of the fireplace so in this little black cardboard box I'm poking through one of the light bulbs from the deconstructed doll home. I'm using sharpie to color some of the wax paper to act as my fire and of course little branches will act as my fireplace logs. Are you screaming yet? Let me know in the comments down below. Okay somehow it's 11 o'clock at night and I'm trying to get in some of these larger elements like the flooring and fireplace and walls and the wiring which has to go behind and under all of those elements and not gonna lie it's really hard to do a reno in a four inch by five inch by eight inch hole in your wall but I'm really loving how it's all looking. But good news is I've decided to add a little half mezzanine for added interest. Okay I think it is finally the last day that we have to work on this mouse house. I thought this would take like a couple days and here we are. But I think we're good. Many of the large pieces are in so today let me think about what we have to do. We have to bring in our decor. We have to make a few pieces like I think that the front door needs a doorknob. I want to make a little cheese board. I need to make a coffee table which I don't even know if I have all the materials for that so I might need to run out. I feel like I need some rugs. We need some decor. There's just a lot of things we need to do to bring in the final touches. But I'm so happy with how it's looking. Are you guys like squeeing as much as I'm squeeing throughout this whole process because there's a lot of squeeing going on. And once I decided to do the mezzanine I upcycled the stairs from the original home to integrate with like the textured wall that I have in the space and of course to match my chosen flooring. I pulled some art from the Met's open access gallery database. Just some landscapes that I think will work well in my little house. For the rugs I'm creating a faux hide and just kind of a natural toned regular old rug. I just find that this helps make it look like less like a piece of felt and more like a textured rug. I think that these felts are really nice colors too. They are very complimentary. Okay so I know that for this living room I want to do a little coffee table because I have my cheese board and my wine to put on there. So I drew out this out of cardboard. It fits. It's kind of like that 50s style kidney bean shape. Very a la that episode of Upgrade My Stay that we did. And then I have these skewers here and I actually think that they would be the perfect mid-century modern feet because a lot of the mid-century modern feet kind of like come to this tapered point. So I'm gonna try to cut out this shape out of wood and then glue it all together and then probably paint it. Okay I think I'm done with all of the woodworking. I do still have to paint stuff but I'm gonna have to paint some of my clay work too. So I'm going to make those first and then I'll paint everything. Sorry this video is a little hard to film because everything's so so I hope you guys are enjoying it. If you are enjoying this content do feel free to subscribe and turn on the notification bell so you can be notified whenever we post a video. We also have a second channel where we post vlogs. That one you definitely need a notification bell for because it's a little bit more inconsistent but we're always here for you making the content so we would definitely love to see you here more often. If you're not yet subscribed. Okay the clay part. I've been waiting for this the whole time so I'm excited and nervous. I brought tools. Scalpel? Does anybody even know what a scalpel is? Oh my god squirrels! Behave! Okay I cannot believe we made it here but everything I think is done and painted and assembled. Not me reeling my little butcher block. Wait this is actually such a dumb joke because now how are my little cheese is gonna stick to it like glue's not gonna stick to oil. Okay it does look cuter though once it has a little bit of oil on it. Okay time to place in the furniture and decor. Okay now before I show you the final reveal definitely stick around to the end of this video because I'm going to show my dad who basically inspired this whole little space um so I'm excited to see his reaction and I hope that I do it justice because it's just really hard to shoot such a small space and the little lights are like a very weird color like they look just nice and warm in person but on camera they're very green. Anyways presenting the new unit in my duplex I'm now a triplex my little mouse house. I would like to thank Karen for building the first kit house which really helped me out along the way. Rachelle at the sorry girls also really helped assemble some of these pieces. Of course my father for the inspiration and lastly miniatures tiktok. Okay oh hello hi welcome this is all because of you it's all my fault yeah but it's a good thing. Okay ready y'all get into the shop. Okay what do you open my eyes okay yeah that's just the outside he's all lit up in there yeah ready okay oh he removed oh my gosh holy isn't that crazy that's great how'd you get those lights in there there's a battery is there a little battery there there's a little battery pack like hidden in there but it's it was hard it's hard to get let me see I have to get closer these glasses are I was gonna remind you guys to bring your glasses little chair little table plants what's a two-story it's got it has a mezzanine it's got the mezzanine stairs going up the fireplace did you see the cheese board I'm seeing it now it's brie I see the brie it was worth you buying this house you get a whole new career ahead of you kiddo this is this makes it all worth it I was I was I wasn't sure I wasn't sure what you were doing with this place but now I see this is this is why you bought it thanks for watching and I'll see you guys next time bye now whoa wait you guys didn't actually think I forgot to decorate for Christmas did you Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from me my little mouse and everyone at team TSG we'll see you next week where Rachel will take you along with tips and hacks while she gets her together for the upcoming year bye bye hi I'm Rachel now I know I might not be the sorry girl you are used to seeing but I am just thrilled to be here you may have seen me before helping Kelsey or Becky or Becky and Kelsey but today I'm running the show I don't know sounds pretty good to me this is so good