Tell Direct Line what you would do to your home to create your ultimate Home Plus. Three lucky Mumsnetters will be given £1,000 to fulfil their creative urges. NOW CLOSED

[MichelleMumsnet]

Direct Line have asked us to find out what Mumsnetters would do to their homes to go the extra mile to make it a "Home Plus". What would you do with £1,000 if you had the choice?

Here's what Direct Line say, "We know that a home is more than just a house, that’s why our Home Insurance Plus policy has additional benefits to cover more of the things you love. And right now there’s 20% off when you buy online!

(Discount applies when you buy buildings and contents together. Minimum premiums apply. New customers only. Underwritten by U K Insurance Limited)

We want to hear what your ultimate Home Plus ideas are – what would you love to do to your home to go that extra mile and make it a Home Plus Home?"

So, what is the craziest idea you've had about renovating your home, but just haven’t been able to justify the cost for? Perhaps you have always wanted to have a jungle themed bedroom? Or mimic the beach complete with beach hut, sand, 'sea' and palm trees in your back garden? Whatever it is, we'd love to hear it.

Three lucky Mumsnetters will be selected to carry out their idea and will be given the £1,000 they need to do so! The winners who are selected must be willing to provide before and after pictures of the area of their homes they choose to renovate with the £1,000 prize. The renovation work must be done and the pictures must be provided by Monday 11th August. Photos will be posted on Direct Line's hub on Mumsnet and may be used in further marketing material by them.

Thanks and good luck,

MNHQ

[Bonkerz]

I'm a childminder and would love to build an outside permanent canopy that stretches down one whole side of my garden and would allow the children complete free flow play from inside to outside in all weathers and provide lots of new learning opportunities. It would also be brilliant for alfresco dining for my family and provide a hangout for my teens!

[Morebounceperounce]

I am a frazzled working parent of a pre-schooler and a baby. I dream of a corner of my house that is half zen garden and half mini-library, where I can retreat, get my head together and get back to the person my family needs me to be.

Very Eliza Doolittle, room somewhere, comfy chair, wouldn't it be luvverly sigh

[ShatnersBassoon]

I'd love to renovate my rubbish, cluttered utility room. I am a complete saddo who loves doing the laundry, but my utility is a place I am in and out of as quickly as possible because it's draughty and miserable. I dream of an immaculate room, laid out exactly as I would like it with supremely useful storage space and no slugs coming in through the gap around the washer outlet.

[ouryve]

We just want our house not to leak

One of the things that we are working on is chipping off and replacing the old pebbledash with smart, coloured render. The manufacture of the render markets a technique for using 2 colours of the render to create fake bricks. Apart from being far too garish to look nice, I've never seen a single house where the proportions haven't been wrong, ending up with the problem of quarter "bricks" or even tiny pieces of "brick" in the wrong place. I'm half tempted to actually go for the effect, but rather than terracotta and beigy colours, go for pink and blue. That should make us popular with the neighbours :o

[TheHouseatWhoCorner]

DD's bedroom is at the top of the stairs. The space is so tiny that one wall has been taken away to make it open plan/more spacious.the downside to that is that it she has no privacy (not really an issue when she was tiny).

But now she's 6 she's starting to want her own space.

I'd love to put the wall back, and be really creative about using the little space. She's got a fab cabin bed but I want her room to be fun as well as functional.

If I could also figure out a way of storing her gazillion teddies my life would be complete.

[whosafraidofnaomiwolf]

I would like to add a turret a la sleeping beauty/mediaeval castle style to my teenage daughters bedroom. I live in a boring victorian terrace and she could do with the extra space. We can't quite fit a wardrobe, bed And a desk in her room so the turret would be her study. I'd line the walls with shelves and build a curved desk to go round the wall. It would be fab and everyone would then want one :D x

[AnyoneForTennis]

I'm in a 5 bed new build..... Magnolia and bland!

I would like COLOUR!

Stripes and different feature walls. Some paint,some wallpaper. Nothing 'safe' and nothing 'samey'

I'd like a decorator to do some of it but I'd like to do some myself as well. I'd like a chalkboard wall and some glittery paint as well as some glow in the dark stuff in boys room. Got teens and younger kids so can have some fun

I also like wall transfers

So basically I'd like to create a personality for my house!

[AnyoneForTennis]

To add, I'm talking lime/scarlet/teal/yellow/turquoise/orange and cerise!

[CMOTDibbler]

DH built a lovely, huge, deck. But we don't have any garden furniture (budget ran out as the deck cost rather more than initial estimate due to the size expanding), and I'd love to build a gazebo so we can sit out and enjoy the garden properly.

[Nittynana]

I would love to restore my edinburgh tenement to its former glory and make it accessible and comfortable for me

[EwanHoozami]

We've just bought out own home after years of renting. It's a real do-er upp-er (barely a liver-inner but we're coping so far!)

I'm torn between my the sensible grown-up voice that tells me to renovate sensibly and tastefully with an eye to selling on one day, and the naughty voice that is telling me to do up my utility room like a disco. I'm talking Studio 54, glitterballs, silver lamé curtains, pink studded rubber floor and spotlights.

So my Home Plus Home secret wish is to have to world's smallest nightclub in the tiny space that most people just use for laundry and dirty wellies.

[HappyHippyChick]

I would love to build one of those big sheds for the bottom of my garden and fit it out as a fun hang out for my two older sons.

I have five children; an 11-year-old, a 10-year-old and then a three-year-old, a two-year-old and a new born baby. I would love to get the older two boys somewhere they can go and hang out, especially now they are close to becoming teenagers, somewhere they can bring friends without their siblings annoying them.

I picture some squishy sofas, a dartboard, music system... Them out of my hair! Bliss...

[Pinotgrigioplease]

I'd love a giant playroom so I can reclaim the rest of my house from the giant toddler toys.

I think what I will end up doing instead is giving my son the larger spare bedroom instead of the box room is he currently in.

I would love to make him a transport themed bedroom with trains and trucks. He would love a cabin bed with a den underneath and I would love him to have large fitted wardrobes to hold his clothes and toys.

[Nouseforausername]

I really want a craft shed down at the bottom of my garden, A place where me and the dog can get some downtime, I've seen the most amazing ones made from an old caravan or just a lovely summer house

[gazzalw]

We have a cupboard under the stairs which I think would just about be big enough to turn into a downstairs loo - that would be brilliant! With four people in the house demands on a one bathroom, one loo house are great and it's not ideal!

It would improve our quality of life, particularly when both DCs arrive home simultaneously both wanting the loo....cue arguments aplenty!

So a simple improvement but it would make life so much easier !

[Maiyakat]

We only have a small back yard - I'd like to knock down the 'shed' (old toilet!) and raised flower beds and get someone with more creative talents than me to paint DD's favourite characters on the wall. Also could have a 'blackboard' wall so DD could add to the art work!

[AndHarry]

I would love to turn my under-the-stairs cupboard into a playhouse/reading room for my two children. I'd have a door and window into the hall and a child-size 'secret' door into the dining room. Inside would be a slim-fit bookcase like the one from Tidy Books, a child-size armchair and a light. I can't paint for toffee so I'd have someone paint a mural on the wall of a caricatured planet Earth with characters and places from different stories on and around it: aliens from Aliens Love Underpants in a spaceship, the bear from Going on a Bear Hunt, Meg & Mog flying through the sky on a broomstick, the Enormous Crocodile zooming towards the sun to be sizzled up like a sausage... and glow-in-the dark stars on the ceiling.

I started looking into how to do it a few weeks ago but it's beyond either my skills or my purse!

[iwantavuvezela]

I want to turn the loft space which is accessed through our bedroom into a massive walk in type wardrobe. I am imagining rails, good lighting, mirrors and a comfy chair. At the moment it is just an empty shell but I can dream ....
We also have the great big half wall that looks onto our garden and I would love to pay a street artist to come and do a piece of graffiti on it. I think it would be lovely to have my own secret outdoor art.

[VeryDullNameChange]

I want the ultimate in storage/display space. DS has the smallest bedroom but mountains of books and loads of precious little models that he'd love to display. I want to give him custom made floor to ceiling shelves built around a modelling/homework desk, some just tall enough for paperbacks, some for hardbacks and A4, and some display shelves (large, medium and small) with a glass front to stop dust. I also have my eye on the space beside the staircase to fit an enormous glass floating shelf to display a rotating exhibition of DH's favourite Lego and cardboard models.

[PlanetArghhh]

We live in a lovely new build house but it is a semi and not quite as spacious as we need/would like.

With a spare £1,000 we would:

1. Build a whole wall of hidden storage in the living/dining/playroom(!) to hide the day to day crap that stops it looking like a place to retreat and relax
   
   
2. Extend the patio so the parasol on the garden table doesn’t collide with the rotary washing line
   
   
3. Install some sort of sound insulation on the front bedroom wall so that our DS’s don’t get woken in the night by our next door neighbours enjoying umm… night time activities
   
   Our DIY Things To Do list is as long as your arm but the above would be a good start!

[Starlightnight]

The one area that I would love to give a big injection of tlc into is my two Ds's bedroom which they share.

My 2 DS's room is very tired and standard. I dream about turning it into a night sky room for them. I would love to paint the room blue and the ceiling with the correct constations using proper glow in the dark paint. I would install the solar system and a moonclock. It would be lovely to create a space for them to play and learn that is based on science and space to stimulate their imaginations.
They are fascinated by the international space station and space junk so I would need to incorporate some of this in too with perhaps a telescope to help with their stargazing and finding the real constellations in the nights sky.

[Ratbagcatbag]

After having (and still got) a none sleeping 15 month old, I find I'm tucked up in my bed earlier and earlier. 8pm anyone?!? So I'd love to turn my bedroom into an amazing boudoir with new wallpaper, mood lighting, mattress and luxury bedding that literally eats you as you get in it.
If I had change from that, I saw an amazing Shakespeare quote that suits my dd. "and though she be but small, she is fierce" I've tried asking a couple of bespoke companies to make me a very specific frame up with it on, but I'm having no luck. I'd hunt someone down who could do exactly what I want and have it in my dd's room. :)

[iK8]

I really, really want a beautiful, bespoke front gate and railings crafted by a master craftsman. Not something in swirly wrought iron but something a bit different. I have a Pinterest page of gates I an inspired by and I quote fancy something in a dark blue with each rail/upright shaped with a poppy seed head at the top.

But really we should get the front window and the flashing replaced and the front wall that's falling down

Otherwise all the other thing I want (like a big kitchen or an extra bedroom) are a bit more than £1000!

[camtt]

I could get very excited about lofts. These lofts aren't big enough for an extra room but the space above the kitchen in particular, I would love to board out, insulate and - most of all - install a telescopic ladder that I can easily use without the assistance of two other ladders that I have to fetch from the shed and a willing 6footer. Then I would put my husband's crap in it, and it wouldn't be teetering dustily behind the sofa disturbing me with it's appearance of rubbish and suspicion of dust mites, and he wouldn't be annoyed that his stuff was being eyed up for the skip. Then there's a another smaller loft space which would work very nicely for suitcases if I could only get up there - see telescopic ladder above.