A line of newly-washed batik flaps in the yard of Bernadette Madden's rambling early Victorian house, on Grand Canal Street in Dublin 4. It's an everyday sight, rain or shine, since the house is both home and studio for fabric artist Bernadette.

The house is a tidy "grownups" place, no tricycles in the hall or toys on the bedroom floor. It is also visually beautiful - a kaleidoscope of colour from brightly painted walls and the large collection of paintings bought and bartered by Bernadette over the years.

"I was one of the first of a new wave of people to buy a house in the city," she says. "I bought a house in Ranelagh for £9,000, put £3,000 into it and sold it for £33,500 in less than three years. But I didn't like Ranelagh and I was on the move mentally from the moment I moved in.

"Then I saw an ad in the paper for this house and got it. It was in terrible condition, with two rooms I never got to see because the windows were barricaded. The kitchen had a rotting floor and you had to use the back door because the front was totally overgrown. My friends said I was mad.

"This part of town was not considered a good area in the early 1980s, when people preferred buying nice modern estate houses further out in Cabinteely. I paid £40,000 for it - a lot of money at the time for a wreck. For all the chaos, when I looked around the house it had a happy feeling. The previous owner had planted daffodils in the back garden and they're still there. There was very little left of the original interior. They'd taken out all the fireplaces, so I had to put those back."

The slate-floored blue-green and grey kitchen, very much the heart of the house, was built for Bernadette by a surgeon friend in his spare time. "I did a fair bit of trading because money was tight. I swopped the marble worktop from a head-stone maker for one of my batiks. The fireplace I installed does work, but I've stacked it with logs."

One tip anyone good with their hands could copy is a utility cupboard made for storing vases. This is painted white, with steel mesh door panels.

"I was lucky. I was one of the first in my generation to buy a house so a lot of friends came and helped. The wood and ceiling timbers were stained dark brown and there was a lot of hidden work. I put on a new roof last year. We used recycled slates and some from the original roof. It's still not in perfect condition but it will see me out."

The diningroom and sittingroom were originally two rooms. "I bought the dividing doors from a friend and deliberately didn't put in architraves. The fitted cupboards were put in because I entertain a lot - I don't really like building in things. The heating was designed by an engineer who believed radiators should go under a window, not along the wall."

By the window that looks out on the front garden is an eye-catching Dick Joynt sculpture of a sunbather reclining on black-dyed sand. Another stone sculpture in the garden faces west. The ornate ceiling plasterwork is in perfect order.

"The Old Mould in Dun Laoghaire took one petal away and made the centrepiece. It's beautifully put together. Of all the houses in the street, this is the nicest." The drawingroom is over 300 sq ft and one of the windows has been cleverly altered to make an unusual half-door opening onto the terrace. A circular dining table, made from MDF and disguised with a pretty cloth, will seat twelve at a push, says Bernadette. Around the table, ornate chairs from Flanagans originally came from an Italian cruise liner. A mahogany serving table and a dumb waiter were found some years ago in a skip outside the Kildare Street Club. The high padded club fender by the fireplace doubles as extra seating and the chandelier came from Dublin Ironcraft. "I wanted the room to be stylish - not pretty, but with an edge to it," she says.

On the staircase, Charles Harper paintings and Barrie Cooke drawings are combined with the work of talented art students, a collection so colourful and eclectic that it takes half-an-hour to climb the stairs. "Some are presents, some gifts and some swaps," says Bernadette. Just a couple of her own paintings hang here because there is not enough space.

The front room on the first floor is at the moment a "dumping ground" according to Bernadette but will soon be transformed into a study and storage room for hundreds of reference books on batik art.

One bookshelf holds her collection of children's books, among them several Chalet School novels and old annuals. The guest bedroom is a big sunny room with a new hardwood floor and a bed-head which was once an old sideboard mirror.

The main bedroom is painted dark green, with a red carpet and old samplers on the walls, for a genuine Victorian look. Hanging clothes are curtained off with a lace panel and there are shelves of books. A picture frame festooned with colourful costume jewellery hangs over a marble washstand in the huge en suite bathroom, which has room for a traditional claw-foot bath.

Bernadette avoids showing visitors over her work studio because it's bad luck to see work in progress. In a separate gallery, the walls are hung with a selection of her work. "I'm doing something for Irish Cement at the moment. President McAleese gave a batik painting of the Book of Kells to the Pope when she visited the Vatican. A lot of people buy them as wedding presents. Ten of us went to Israel a year and a half ago to get inspiration. It was a great experience. I do like Ireland - especially Galway - and those intense blue skies we get occasionally," she says.

In the side garden where she dries the batik, Bernadette grows herbs and vegetables among the flowers. "I've planted leeks, celery, chard and rhubarb. The fig tree will have figs this year. I have blackberries and wineberries and I always grow tomatoes in the summer. My seeds come from the Irish Seed Savers association."

"It's getting a bit like yuppieland around here," one local man said to her recently, adding that while his first child just about managed to build a townhouse in the area, the other two will be forced to move away. Bernadette counts herself fortunate to live so close to town.

"I don't need a car - I can't drive and I don't wish to. I love walking and sometimes I get the bus. And there's a new DART station at Barrow Street now," she says. "I never wanted to have people living with me. I really love my own space."