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spicedsteward
93 sqm Mid-century modern inspired x TaoBao 4 room HDB
We squeeze another freezer and sink in our service yard??!
5107
Often neglected, the service yard has a lot of important roles to play in a house. Besides the standard stuff we will have in a service yard, here’s the big decisions we made when designing our service yard. Big decision #1: Hacking service yard wall/door We will be hacking the service yard wall to solve the lack of countertop space in the kitchen. As much as we’d like to separate and hide the service yard, it runs opposite to our open design concept. By hacking the wall, it also means the pipes are more exposed and we might need to trunk it up. The service yard wall has a RC beam which we choose not to hack. This will save us on PE endorsement and addition price of about $800. We are probably going to hide the pipes with carpentry because we realised we need a proper storage space for cleaning supplies that are long (mops, brooms, vacuum cleaner etc) 
Big decision #2: Having additional sink It felt kind of ridiculous to have another sink. But think of it this way. A sink filled with dirty dishes will be hard to use for other purposes. There’s also other stuff you want to wash that might not make sense in a sink. For example, would you want to wash your mop in that sink? You can wash it in the bathroom, for sure. But if the cleaning supplies are in the service yard, then maybe it makes sense to put them near each other. This additional sink is to solve those problems. 
Big decision #3: Having a chest freezer! My favourite experience when I first visited Harbin in the winter was how the outdoor acted as a freezer to store a lot of frozen food. This gave me an idea that it would be great to also replicate this freezer storage in the service yard. Let’s be real. The actual fridge storage is simply not enough to fit all the ice cream and frozen food. This is also yet another point to catering to our own needs and how we want to live our life. Given our interests in cooking and looking towards to meal prep, frozen food actually help a lot in this way! We can also separate frozen meat to edible stuff instead of mixing into one fridge. The typical fridge can be used to keep day to day things while the chest freezer can be used for long-term storage. We can also now buy meat in bigger portions, and not to worry we can freeze the leftovers. Think of all the possibilities out there: dumplings, fried food (popcorn chicken, french fries, karrage), stock, meal prep. As always, build your house to your own needs and how you plan to live!
30 July 2025
