Designing a Beautiful & Functional Service Yard for under $200
96
- Scandinavian
- HDB (Resale)
- ~1,000 sqft
- 3 br
- Couple Living
Hello! You've now stepped into our service yard, which also acts as an extension of our kitchen. This wall that you see here used to be an open doorway to the common bathroom, which we chose to seal up and shift further inwards to give us more space to cook, clean and do laundry! This zone is our little pet project as we chose not to do any built-in carpentry through our ID as we knew we wanted to work on the space ourselves after we moved in to save some money. We found some budget-friendly ideas to make the space really fun with colour and also super functional and useful for our daily use! For starters, on the left side of the service yard, we drilled in an IKEA tabletop (which we got from the AS-IS section) to create an outdoor cooking worktop space, which we use for our airfryer/grill, water kettle, and also in case we ever did some heavy cooking with a portable stove. We secured them with some L-shape brackets that my grandfather found and bought off of shopee. It was a whole team effort from my grandpa, dad and husband to get this tabletop installed!! 😆 So grateful for their help! We found these beautiful peel-&-stick tiles on Amazon that really makes the space come together. D couldn't help herself and threw in a little art print to add another pop of colour into the space! We thought the chrome frame also matched in really nicely with the electrical appliances. Here's a tip if you are getting a stone kitchen countertop, you can ask your ID or contractor to save the cut-out piece from your sink or stovetop for you! Here we are using our sintered stone cut-out as a heatproof surface for our cooking or placing hot pans or trays. 
A little before & after segment! I can't believe how white this space looked before 😲 Right below our worktop, we placed our two most favourite appliances... our dishwasher and robot cleaner!! We already knew from the start that these were appliances that we wanted to get for our home at some point, even if we didnt get them immediately, so we planned the spaces for them in the service yard zone. We were really blessed to get our dishwasher second-hand from my relatives, as they were moving out of a bigger house and couldn't take their dishwasher with them to their new home. Another tip if you are thinking of getting a dishwasher, do plan for a water outlet and pipe at the area you are wanting to place it! We made sure to install the worktop slightly above the dishwasher, so it makes it easier to shift and pull out to clean or if there are problems with it in the future. The space beside it was also just nice for our robot cleaner to fit and also take the water tanks off. There is nothing that quite beats the feeling of filling your dishwasher to the brim after a night of hosting friends over for dinner, clicking a button, and saying "yup, i've done the dishes!" 😌 Looking further back, we also chose to place our heater here, hidden up at the top, out of sight from the kitchen zone too! On the right side of our service yard is our laundry area. We chose to go with a separate washer & dryer, stacked on top of one another to save space. We kept the retractable laundry poles above as they were still in good condition. D likes to use the dryer with a sheet of Bounce to make our clothes nice and soft (a habit she took with her from her parents’ home) The stained glass bi-fold door that we made also folds towards this side of the yard, which acts as a cover for the cleaning tools and the unconcealed pipes behind. We use a narrow storage trolley from IKEA that fits perfectly in the small space we have, and makes it easier for cleaning since it can be rolled out. We bought these magnetic hanger holders on shopee, which we actually found through another home owner's instagram post (though we can't remember which one...) It is a great organiser and space saver. We also scored an IKEA octopus clothes clip hanger for $2 on a clearance sale, for our little laundry pieces, which folds up very nicely and can be tucked away in a corner. 
Finally, an approx breakdown of cost of the things we bought to spruce up & organise our service yard (not inclusive of the appliances): - AS-IS IKEA LAGKAPTEN Tabletop ($40) - L-shaped Bracket ($7 x4 = $28) - Peel-&-Stick Tiles ($48.88 per 10 sheets x2 = $98) - Magnetic Hanger Rack ($11) - IKEA Octopus Clip Hanger ($2) - IKEA VESKEN Trolley ($12) Total = $191 We love our hidden functional space that works so well for us! Thanks for reading!
- 4 days ago
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