Her stone cabin is a replica from Harry Potter & the inside is spectacular

Whoa. It's huge, isn't it? Haggard's hut is iconic. It was actually easy to design because we already had a plan based on the movie. Most of the stuff is secondhand and found at estate sales and thrift shops. But then there were a couple of things where I couldn't compromise. We spent the money. Can you give me an example? The dragon. I wasn't able to find a discount dragon, unfortunately. It's kind of shocking when I would tell you how much money we spent on this place. My name is Mamie Gale. And what you see behind me is our passion project, the Half Giant Hut, which we worked on over the course of seven years. Hi, Mamie. Hi, it's nice to meet you. Thanks for coming. Thanks so much for having me here. This place is amazing. I love what you've done. You're obviously a Harry Potter fan. Huge. Awesome. And I heard you did a lot of the work yourself. A lot of the design is of your brainchild. Yes, absolutely. So tell me a little bit about it. Let's start with this amazing, huge door. Well, thank you. It originally was going to be eight feet tall. Then we thought, that's not big enough, so we went nine feet. And then when it came in, I told the company that was doing it, they needed to beat it up. I wanted it to look medieval. And the men that were doing it were having a really hard time. In fact, I went back three times and said, keep going. It's not quite right. So how did they beat it up? Chains, hammers, nails. All of these that I'm seeing here? Yes. Yeah. So you took a brand new, custom, perfect door, and you just beat it up. And that's your commitment to this. We love that Hagrid is a gentle giant. And a lot of people can relate to his kindness. Hagrid's hut is iconic. It was actually easy to design, because we already had a plan based on the movie. We had to find a builder. The first builder I called, I told him that I was interested in building a 650-square-foot cabin. And he said, not interested. And I said, can I tell you about it? And he said, sure. And I said, well, we're basing it off of Hagrid's hut from Harry Potter. And he said, I'm in. That was it. That was all he needed. Oh, it's kind of shocking when I would tell you how much money we spent on this place. We went into this rather naively. We set a loose budget, because we didn't really have any idea how much land was going to cost and materials. We'd never done anything like this before. We kind of blew our budget out of the water. Well, I can't wait to see the rest of the inside. Come on in. All right. Whoa. It's huge, isn't it? This is big to me. I mean, and not just because I'm used to tiny homes, but because I'm 5' 4". You seem also a person of short stature. And this is obviously built for a very tall person. So the first thing that happens when you walk in the door is you just laugh, because it's so big. And you feel like a child again. Yeah, so did you build a lot of these furniture pieces yourself? Actually, I did. The chairs, the sofa, and then what's this here? This is a Murphy bed. We thought, while four people can sleep comfortably in the bed, four people might not want to sleep together in the bed. And so we built this Murphy bed. Tell me about some of these other pieces of furniture that you built. Well, I was first actually had the idea that I wanted to make it look rustic and something that you would see in a cabin. And so I just scoured the internet and tried to find an idea. My brother helped me. He lives in North Carolina, and he flew up here because he had a week off. And I said, OK, we have a week. Let's do this. And you built all these furniture pieces in a week? In one week. And did you have any experience building furniture before? Well, my dad has a wood shop. So I kind of grew up with tinkering in the wood shop. But no, I've never built a couch before. This is the first time. I mean, that's amazing. But yeah, we built the bed, the chair, the couch, everything we built. My brother is really tall. And so if he looked like a house elf sitting on the chair, then I knew that people who are short like me also would. So yeah, this is a really interesting piece of furniture. Is this one of your finds? Yes, actually. We found this on Facebook Marketplace. Most of the stuff is secondhand and found at estate sales and thrift shops and Goodwill and places like that. But then there were a couple of things where I couldn't compromise. We spent the money. Can you give me an example? The dragon. I wasn't able to find a discount dragon, unfortunately. Speaking of dragons, I noticed over here there's something cooking in the pot. Oh, yeah. You saw our egg. What is this made out of? You wouldn't know, would you? Actually, this is just a plastic egg underneath here. And I filled it with some foam. And so it would be a little bit heavier. And then I paper mached it and then I sanded it down and then I painted it with some iridescent paint. I mean, that sounds like a lot of work. It was actually. It took about a week because I had to wait for it to dry. And it has about eight layers of paper machinery on it. So dry time. Yes, absolutely. And then you created a cauldron. Yeah, isn't that fun? I found this actually at a confinement shop in Salt Lake and I had to have it. And then, of course, if you're going to have a cauldron, you have to have fire underneath it. And so I didn't want to have a real fire in here. So I was able to find some LED logs. I've worked in the movie theater business for quite some time. A couple of the first movies that my kids were really excited about, the Harry Potter series, they thought it was crazy after they saw the amount of things that I was bringing home and finding all over the United States, about 19 pallets worth. We gathered stuff for about seven years, almost eight years. The Niffler, he's this cute little creature here who loves all things shiny. And surprisingly, working in a movie theater, people leave jewelry all the time. So a lot of this is just lost and found. And there, if you can kind of see that really big gem. I did find that online and it was pretty cheap, though, because it's not real. Yeah, it's not real. So if you come here and you have some costume jewelry that you'd like to donate to the Niffler. Open the door there and set it right in. Yeah, there you go. I'm sure he would appreciate it. I learned on YouTube, it's my favorite thing to do, to make books. So a history of magic by Batilda Bagshot. I made that. How did you make it? Explain the process. Well, actually, this one is just an old book. I found it in a state sale and I paper mached a paper towel onto it. So that's where the texture is. And then I just got some wooden letters and I put that underneath the paper towel and then I just painted it like coppery color. Nice. Not fun. Yeah. Easy to do. One of the books that the students at Hogwarts have to have every year is the standard book of spells. So I have floating around here one through seven. So I also did that. But I made it so you can open it because I didn't want to just ruin the magic from people opening up and seeing it's the end version of the encyclopedia. And you can't share spells with a bunch of muggles. Exactly. Exactly. They wouldn't understand anyway. So anyway, those are floating around as well. OK, so here's the bathroom, which has a regular size toilet. I imagine Haggard would have a hard time using this. But this is pretty cool here. All right. I haven't really gotten to use one of those before. So that was pretty cool. And then to get up to the sink, a couple of steps. And even with the step stool, I'm like 5'4". I can barely see in the mirror. But it's a pretty cool effect. I feel like I'm a little kid. Like I feel like a toddler. This is what a toddler must feel like. Now let's check out the shower. I wonder if it's giant sized. Here's the shower. And I think that shower head is probably 12 feet up or something. I don't know. I think I could stand on my own head and still not hit it. Here we have the kitchen. All right. So it's like a kitchenette kind of, right? Yes, a little bit. Haggard wasn't known for his culinary skills, so we don't have a lot of things to make anything. We have a microwave and a fridge. They are muggle versions. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a wizard version of a fridge. So we have some muggle amenities in here. But you also have a half giant amenity. We absolutely have half giant amenities. You can't come to the half giant hut without eating. There's a knife in there, too, but without eating with our giant stuff. Yeah. Yeah, that's fun. I love it. For those who are vertically challenged, we have step stools everywhere so you can come up here and wash dishes or wash your hand. It's pretty big. It's just funny. So I see a lot of pictures of people climbing on here and videos of them with their feet dangling here. But I did put this little bar in here so you can put your feet on and be more comfortable. But it's actually for the height of the table and the height of the chair. I did go with what my kitchen table was. So it would be comfortable if you're sitting up here eating. This is my first and only and my last watercolor that I've ever done. That took me about five hours. And the rest of the ladies that were in my watercolor class were painting umbrellas. And I said, I would love to paint Dobby. And I think it was a little too ambitious because it took a really long time. And I think I cried three times when I was painting it. OK, well, this is a giant bed. It is. It's it's bigger than a king, I would say. Yeah. Longer, at least. Yes, it is longer than a king. The mattress is one hundred eight inches long. Wow. OK, so custom. Actually, we were going to do custom and then we were concerned that if we had to replace it on the fly, that that wouldn't be feasible since it was about a three month lead time. So it's actually a mattress and a half. Oh, OK. So now I have to do when I have to replace it on the fly is buy one mattress because I already have the other half. I see. Yeah. And then we did get a custom topper, custom sheets, custom quilts. And we have doubles of everything. And five sets of sheets and blankets, but doubles of the quilt. Tough being a half giant. It sure is. So, yeah. Wow. This is an amazing piece right here. Where'd you find this? We got that and in a state sale, of course. It costs seven whole dollars. Oh, my. This is one of my favorite finds. Who's this lurking over here in this photo? Oh, my goodness. This is Hagrid's girlfriend. This is one of the things that guests comment on the most. They love the picture of Madam Maxine on the bedside table. And let's just talk about this bed frame for a second. These are like four by fours here. Those are actually six by six by sixes. Yeah. And then four by sixes here. And it's pretty beefy. Oh, my God. One of the things we also did when we were making this and then staining it is if you look around, you can see where Feng has scratched it. Like he wants to get up. How did you do that? A tool, a multi-tool, jigsaws, of course, chains and nails and hammers to beat it up a little bit. He had a lot of fun. Those were our favorite tools. He was making these things. Yes, absolutely. Nothing like making something from scratch and then just destroying it. I know. I know. It's obviously came in here in pieces because it wouldn't fit through the door, but it took four strong men to bring just the headboard in here. Oh, my gosh. We figure it weighs about 300 pounds. Just the headboard. Well, I hear there's other things on the property that we can see. Yep. So maybe you could show us those. I would love to. Great. So over here is Mr. Weasley's flying car from the second movie. Oh, man. I wonder if it actually flies. Mamie told me that she found this on eBay and paid just thirty five hundred dollars for it was a different color. They spray painted it. It used to be a demolition derby car. So there was a whole interior cage that they had to rip out. And now guests get to enjoy it. We made this greenhouse into Professor Sprout's class. If you see this wooden structure in there, that's actually the well house. And we had to have that insulated. And so it just really worked out well for us to do something magical about it, too. I like that even with the well house, you decided to make it a part of the whimsy, you know, you could have just built something, a shed or whatever around it. But no, you had to go on. Exactly. Exactly. It's fun to see people come over here and take pictures of Mandrake. We call her affectionately Mandy. I actually get to touch her. You actually can touch her. I like that. Just, you know, again, just the little tidbits. Yeah. Yeah. But I, there's more, right? Yeah. We have the car outside. We have the greenhouse and then we've got a double decker bus. So this is the night bus. The night bus. Yes. So you had to paint this. I'm pretty sure. Yes. It came to us red. It is a 1966 RML. That stands for root master long. So it's 30 feet long, eight feet wide and 14 foot two tall. So before we drove it over here, we put a high pole on our truck and we made sure we could go under any overpasses and bridges. Kevin and I talked about getting a phone booth here, but they're fairly expensive. And so we kind of went back and forth on whether we wanted to spend the money to do it. And then there was a bar in town that was going out of business and they actually had one inside there. It was a British pub. And so we were able to get that for a pretty good price. Didn't have a door on it though. So I built the door and put some plexiglass in it to keep the critters out. Oh yeah. So yeah. Does the phone work? It does, but it's not plugged in. We're going to do something magical with it. Of course you got to be able to call the ministry of magic was a passion project obviously. And I feel like that we can be very passionate about Harry Potter, but I feel like if we put anything else on this property, it might overdo it. So we're not sure if we want to add something like the tent where they go and watch the Quidditch world cup or something like that. That's something that we thought about doing. So we'll see that maybe something in the future. My favorite thing is to see the videos and the reactions from the kids. They are giddy. It makes me so happy that we were able to accomplish something that they can experience magic with. My favorite spell is of course Wingardium Leviosa, not Leviosa. 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