Dublin 7: € 600,000 If character and a bit of a challenge appeal then 8 Middle Mountjoy Street, Dublin 7, could be just what you're looking for.

Built in the late 1800s, it's part of a terrace in a quiet street of mixed period houses, not far from Blackhall Place and 10 minutes' walk from the centre of town.

It needs work - a new kitchen and modernised bathroom to begin with - but is solidly welcoming with basics like original windows, doors and cornicing, timber floors and cast-iron fireplaces to recommend it.

A good-sized 146sq m (1,570sq ft), it has two storeys over basement, four bedrooms and two reception rooms.

Middle Mountjoy Street's northside location and the fact that it needs total renovation makes its guide price of €600,000 fairly realistic.

Agent Sherry FitzGerald will auction it on November 9th.

The reception rooms are off a bright, entrance hallway, one to the front, the other to the rear. They have timber floors, high ceilings and original sash windows.

The c 1950s fireplace in the front room is tiled; there is a cast-iron period fireplace in the rear room.

This room overlooks the garden where there are high, creeper clad walls, a cement shed and, bordering the end wall, a tall stone warehouse.

Light from a fanlight over the front door meets light from a sash window on the return to make for a bright hallway.

There is a bathrooms at the end of the hallway on the ground floor return; steps from here lead to a two-room basement.

The rear room in the basement is a kitchen with a cast-iron fireplace, the front a bedroom with tiled fireplace.

Both rooms have very low ceilings, a problem resolved in many similar houses by digging to lower the floor.

Two of the other bedrooms are off the first floor landing, both with cast-iron fireplaces.

The larger front room has a pair of elegant sash windows. A short flight of steps lead to an attic-style bedroom where a dormer window gives rooftop views.