A refurbished four-bedroom period house at 5 Longwood Avenue, Dublin 8, in Dublin's Portobello, is for sale by private treaty through Gunne, which is looking for offers in excess of £300,000. Old houses that have been completely renovated and redecorated have always appealed to buyers who didn't want the hassle or the expense of starting from scratch. That is still true, but another reason why properties that have been refurbished from top to bottom are now seen as highly desirable is the difficulty - frustrated homeowners who bought properties "with potential" might say sheer impossibility - of finding a builder to do the work.

This fine terraced house in Portobello bears little resemblance to the way it was only a year ago thanks to its owner/ builder who totally updated it, starting with the basics such as a damp course and rewiring and ending with new carpets and a coat of fresh paint. Off the hall is the livingroom which, unusually, opens into the eat-in kitchen by a single door, as opposed to double doors. This room still has its original fireplace.

The bright kitchen is very large as it spans the width of the house. It has been newly fitted out with extensive pine units and terracotta tiled floors. The entire area was designed with family dining and cooking in mind, so there is plenty of worktop and appliance space, as well as room for a large table. Off the kitchen is a new conservatory and a door which leads to a separate annex made up of two interconnecting rooms, as well as a bathroom and the utility room. The idea behind this is that these rooms could be used as a bedroom and a study making it very suitable for an au pair or a relative who lives in the house but who wants to be slightly separate from the family. The nice part about the annex is that it has access to the garden via large glazed double doors.

Upstairs, the three bedrooms are two average sized doubles and one very small single. One of the larger bedrooms has its original grand fireplace, the other has a new en suite. There is a roomy family bathroom on this level. The builder has also installed rather large built-in wardrobes in each of the bedrooms.

The house is nicely positioned at the canal end of Longwood Avenue and it features a landscaped, low maintenance front garden as well as a very long, if narrow back garden, which is a definite bonus.