getting the builders in - our plans

It has taken several weeks since we got to Céret, but we have chosen a builder and an electrician to do the work needed to open a gallery and art atelier in the house in France. They start on 8th December and this is the soonest we could get anybody.

We will be doing a lot of remedial work on the electrics of the house to conform to current standards and fix a lot of botched jobs done previously, as well as installing new lighting for the gallery and studio. The garage is a very small space and currently houses the hot water tank, which can't be moved, and the washing machine and tumble dryer, which can be moved, but at some considerable expense. So we have not reached a firm decision yet.

If we leave the washing machine and tumble dryer where they are, we can just fit a small car, which has to be 4m or less to get into the space. It is important for us to retain the garage as a space to fit a car, as this saves us €6,000 on getting the required permit to change the use to a business space. Strangely, I can use the back bedroom as a working studio and sell from it as this is not a garage!

There are a few small cars that would suit our purpose, such as the Citroen Nemo, but we would prefer a bigger car!

So we are just mulling over another option, which is to move the appliances backwards into a newly created cupboard in the shower room, we could have an extra 600mm of space in the garage/gallery. And more importantly the back wall of the gallery would be flat and better suited for displaying artwork on.

This would be the plan view: