Here is a hack to add a [visual] cap to the life counter in the inventory menu, as well as the counter on the lives remaining splash screen when you die. You can still gain more than 9 lives, but the counters will only ever display 9 in the menu. This is to prevent tile oddities when going beyond the counter's limit.
This hack will replace the previous one that displays the inventory menu life counter in decimal rather than hexadecimal. So remove that one first, because this new one will need more space, and the old code would just be wasted space.
At 0x2172, paste this code: 20 60 AC
At 0x2C70, paste this code:
AD 9E 07 AD 00 07 8D 9E 07 A9 09 CD 9E 07 10 06 A9 0A 8D 9E 07 60 EE 9E 07 AD 9E 07 CE 9E 07 60
This is setting up a new unused byte in RAM at $79E, to act as the visual cap for the counter in the inventory menu - and later on the splash screen. When the real value of lives ($700) goes to 9, or above, the menu counter will visually stay at 9 by using the value at $79E. It also displays the counter the correct way in decimal, instead of hexadecimal.
Next, we have to move a portion of the permanent Link doll hack 2 bytes to the left. We need the extra space, so let's do that first. If you are using a clean rom, you can skip this part, but for Redux you'll have to do it.
At 0x1E828, paste this code: 20 57 FF
At 0x1FF67, paste this code: EE 00 07 EE 95 07 60
Finally, is the visual cap for the splash screen life counter.
At 0x1C3E4, paste this code: 20 5E FF
At 0x1FF6E, paste this code:
AD 9E 07 A9 09 CD 00 07 10 01 60 AD 00 07 8D 9E 07 60
As you can see, there wasn't much free space here, but there was enough to fit this new code. Since we already initialized a byte in RAM ($79E) for the inventory screen, we will use that here, as well. Like before, if the real value of lives ($700) is at 9, or above, it will load the value at $79E, which has already been capped, and that's it. If it is below 9 lives, it loads the value at $700, and stores it in $79E. This is required to keep the values updated between deaths or upon loading the save file.
That's it!

my bagu idea
https://imgur.com/HD3lmDJ
I actually like the "possible #1" design you made. A single tiny house makes a lot of sense!
