Well, here I go again stepping outside of my usual picks for 'Wreck', but in a world in flux there's power in flex. Which is a pretty pompous way of saying I've selected three semi-commercial properties for you this week instead of my usual detached wreck on a plot.
Of course live/work properties have been around forever and long, long before we started building them into planning categories. Half a century before I had my first garden office, my nana was baking her legendary breadcakes twice a week and selling them from her front door to queues of neighbours.
These three properties are many steps up from that sort of home working but all offer a more quirky challenge for renovators and lifestyle changers.
I'm going to start at the very top of the price and scale range with this large house plus possible holiday let plus museum plus tearoom plus gift shop plus six acres of land on Scotland's Isle of Mull.
Torr A’ Chlachainn House is an extended, detached house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs (one ensuite) and a bedroom and bathroom within the downstairs extension. The rooms in the original house are bit small and awkward and could do with some rethinking, and obviously updating.
The Old Byre Heritage Centre is a large, two-storey building with tearoom and giftshop on the ground floor and the museum, on Mull's history and heritage, on the upper floor. It's cute, but no lift and accessibility is something you'll want to think about if you want to keep the museum (its contents will cost you extra).
There's an odd part-storage, part Ballamory-themed play area outbuilding, and the two storey, one-bedroom Wee Bothy. There are gardens, a field currently rented out for dog training, woodland and carparking.
On the market at offers over £695k through Bell Ingram, details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
My next pick is a house with attached bakery and baker's shop in the lovely North Yorkshire village of Reeth, in Swaledale.
And, so we're clear, those are breadcakes on that counter. Not rolls, not barmcakes, not baps.
The house itself is pretty chunky - four bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs; sitting room and two kitchens downstairs, plus a small dining room that's been turned into a (sort-of) tea room.
Next to that is the shop plus the bakery and prep room, with a courtyard garden and stone outbuilding.
Again, not the best configuration if you want to continue the bakery and tearoom business (you've got competition) and you could definitely do much more with all that upstairs space.
However, it's in a good, central position in a popular Yorkshire Dales village, so lots of potential.
On the market at offers over £315k through Alderson Estate Agents. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
The final property I want to show you is has the lowest price but the biggest challenge. Hell, it's current planning permission means you can't even live there yourself - you'll be renovating it as a holiday let. Maybe you could do something heritage-tourist or eco-business with the ground floor..??
It's a 16th century ex-watermill in the Cumbrian Lake District. Very, very beautiful on the outside, very much a wreck on the inside.
Widewath Mill isn't listed but that hasn't prevented Lake District National Park planners from setting some pretty tough conditions - it's taken three years for this project to get approved.
On the upside, you do at least know that everyone who could possibly get to comment has had their say, including the bats.
The plans are designed to protect the mill's mechanics and gubbins while wrapping around a high-end one bedroom holiday let. The two-storey mill plus separate stone barn sits on a long, narrow plot that includes the section of river feeding the mill.
So, we're talking carefully renovating a non-mortgageable but beautiful bit of Cumbrian industrial heritage in a protected area of countryside and then charging others to holiday there.
On the market at a cash buyer only guide price of £200k via David Britton. Details, videos and pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
