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When David Hopkins bought his East End terraced house at auction four years ago, it had been lived in for years by two old ladies. There was a toilet, a basin, no bath, the kitchen was upstairs and the whole place had a dark and gloomy feel. Hopkins called in the builders and asked them to open up the house and modernise it. In they plodded and up came the wonderful old floorboards and down went a blond-wood floating floor. Out came the original fireplaces - just before the builders left without a trace, leaving a half-finished and ruined house.

'I realised I desperately needed someone to help me put the house back together and plan it properly,' says Hopkins. Then he met the architect, Yen Yen The, and they set about creating a home which has the feel of a contemporary space without losing its historical character. Hopkins, an illustrator and interiors stylist, explains his somewhat eclectic ethos: 'My look is austere contemporary, Arts and Crafts as well as natural, and the "real artificial".

Yen Yen's solution was to retain an element of eccentricity largely through colour. 'We really used it to open up the house,' she explains. 'The idea came from the colours we found after stripping a door - bright green and clotted cream. That gave the theme, only we made it more subtle.' Hopkins takes up the story: 'The floors are what I call Eighties-IBM-computer colour and the walls are in Jungle Drums from Dulux. I considered Farrow & Ball paints, but this isn't the sort of house that requires that expensive chalkiness. It's Victorian utilitarian rather than grand mansion.'

The other trick was to accentuate the wobbly walls. They used Tilcon Limelite renovating plaster for the restoration of the stairwell - choosing white and leaving it bare and suede-like. The only rigorous change is the skylight above the stairwell. By day, daylight pours down the stairs and at night, lined with industrial EncapSulite lighting, it provides a neon glow.

This just left the rear extension, tacked on 30 years ago to accommodate a larger kitchen and bathroom. 'There is no point in having a pastiche of eras,' says Hopkins, 'so we kept these areas contemporary.' Simple iroko-wood-framed doorways and a purple panel acknowledge the visual leap from the house's 1850s origins to the Seventies extension. Costs were kept down by customising Ikea kitchen units with iroko veneer and aluminium-trim doors, while the wall cabinets were given a smoked-glass door reminiscent of Seventies hi-fi units. Best bargain of all is the floor: concrete paving stones varnished to give them a quarry-tile look.

Upstairs, the bathroom is equally utilitarian. 'These floor tiles are the same as the ones on the podium at the Barbican. 'Make a feature of something rather than hide it is my motto,' explains Hopkins.

His resourcefulness continues in the open dining room/ sitting room. Here, a Fifties three-piece suite sits beside a pair of dressers stacked with Seventies Ladybird books. 'I thought about getting a Knoll sofa?' adds Hopkins? 'but the whole place was furnished for less than the cost of the sofa.'

Throughout is a smattering of contemporary art and Brentleighware vases, and pieces of furniture that Hopkins has picked up from skips, junk shops and car-boot sales. His favourite is a bedside table covered in teenage stickers, from charity shop Remar UK. 'Houses should be personal and not about gratuitous good taste and sterile wannabe spaces,' says Hopkins. 'It's memories and associations which are important and make a house a home.'