DUBLIN 12 €400,000:WHAT A RELIEF to walk into a young architect's fully refurbished home and not find a chilly glass box extension, downlighters everywhere and a Corbusier chaise in the corner.

The architect who bought this two bedroom house two years ago at 52 Walkinstown Drive was more down to earth in his ambitions. While he did completely renovate the end-of-terrace house including adding in smart timber double glazing, rewiring/replumbing, decoration and so on, he chose simply to make the best of the 1950s former local authority house's original features and layout.

The house with two bedrooms and a good back garden is for sale through Felicity Fox for €400,000.

The layout is simple. Downstairs, there is a small hallway and a livingroom with an open fire and polished floorboards, which leads into the newly fitted kitchen that runs the width of the house.

Upstairs there are two double bedrooms (one on the small side) and a small bathroom. As this in an end-of-terrace house, the window in the landing is a bonus.

An original feature he chose to maintain were the panelled doors, common in houses of this period, and they really add character. They were dipped to remove all the years of gloss paint and they're now a lovely, rich natural colour.

Whoever designed these houses really thought about how they would be lived in. For example there's a built-in wardrobe in each room, with pannelled doors the same as those throughout the house. A large family was probably reared in this house but at 57.06sq m (614sq ft) it would now be seen as a starter home.

There is room to extend and also the potential to create off-street parking in the good-sized front garden.

52 Walkinstown Drive, Dublin 12

Two-bedroom house that has been renovated by its architect owner

Agent: Felicity Fox