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

[callamia]

I'd like my baby to finally have a nursery. Right now, he rooms in with our study, and it's not a baby's room.

I know exactly what I need to make it happen: a new large bookcase for all of our university books to go in a different room; a bright bookcase for all the baby books; a coat of paint to make the room his, rather than just another rented space; a curtain to cover the blackout blind; and a cosy rug. I'll get some prints from books (Jan Piemkowski and Chihiro Iwasaki) and move up my rocking chair for night feeding.

Having written this down, I'm feeling pretty disappointed with myself for not having done this already.

[CalamitouslyWrong]

Our back reception room is currently an unfinished dumping ground that's a complete disaster.

The sliding patio door is both horrible and a nightmare. It doesn't even lock properly. We'd replace this with a nice set of French doors with additional windows at the side.

We'd also put some stairs down from the door to the back garden (there's an 18" drop with no stairs right now) and change the slabs so as to make a nice patio.

We'd also want to put up shelves in the alcoves for our squillions of books. And buy some furniture. We need a sideboard and a sofa bed (and possibly a couple of chairs, lamp tables etc) in there so it can be a sitting/play room that doubles up as a guest room for the PILs when they come to visit.

[DameEdnaBeverage]

After we had moved house our circumstances suddenly changed and we found that we couldn't afford to do the improvements that we had planned.

I would love to get a new bath as the current one is an old jacuzzi spa type one and ds who has ASD thinks it's 'dirty' and hasn't had a bath for 3 years now. He has acute anxiety so a lovely new bath (without holes) that he could spend time relaxing in would be great. A new light coloured bathroom floor would also be good as the current one is very dark and depressing.

[Keepcalmanddrinkwine]

I would organise my garage properly, storage for camping gear, racks for bikes, a workbench for DH, shelving down one wall and if I finally make room, would love to install some gym equipment with a bit of nice flooring and a flat screen TV/music system. I know I'll never get a car in there though, not even my tiny Fiat!

[chocolateshoes]

I really hate my hallway. It's the size of a postage stamp and dark. It annoys me that it's the first thing people see when they come in. I'd love to bring my front door forward and open out the hallway doubling it's suze with a big glass wall to give tu light. I'd have a built in bench height shoe storage to try to train Ds and Dh to tidy footwear away. It's all a dream of course!

[CheeseEMouse]

I would love to get a bookshelf in the shape of a boat for my daughter's bedroom. I can't justify it, but I think it would be perfect and really compliment her bedroom and be a source of imaginative stories - in several ways! Less exciting but useful would also like to get our wonky fence fixed and a picnic bench for the garden so we properly make use of the extra room we have outside.

[ICanHearYou]

I would carpet our house!

I also want to make the children's room fabulous, painted gothum city mural on the wall, really funky wardrobes and drawers and curtains, just make it like a proper children's bedroom because they don't have that at the moment

[Fav]

Ds's bedroom is awful, with old second hand drawers.
I have plans to have a sturdy cupboard built to fit all his clothes in, his tank of minnows, books etc, so his room is peaceful and uncluttered.
But the really exciting thing I'd like to do is to have a den built for him above the cupboard. He probably has AS and likes to get in things, so this would be his own little space, with cushions in, and anything else he might need, possibly with a porthole looking over his bedroom, with a curtain for privacy.
He has a high sleeper bed, so access would be from his bed, and it could double as a bedside area for a light, drink etc.

I know it's not really renovation, but with £1000, that is exactly what I'd do :)

[Fav]

Just had a quick look at some of the others, mine looks a bit silly

[LadySybilLikesCake]

Na, yours looks amazing, Fav

[VestaCurry]

Level a section of thecback garden (currently it all slopes) so the children can have a much longed for trampoline. It's been their dream for quite a few years.

[shobby]

My desire sounds a bit boring but would transform our home and how we use it...I would like a staircase built up to our loft room! It had been converted for use as a study before we bought the house 18 years ago, but only has ladder access. At the moment it is used as an attic, but is our only potential guest room, which means if anyone wants to stay overnight they have to climb up a dodgy ladder! This means we have never bothered decorating or clearing it out to use as a usable room, which is a total waste of a great space and a grubby embarrassment if anyone dares to stay in there....

[SagaNorensLeatherTrousers]

Hi Direct Line,

This is a picture of our three boys. And this is a picture of what should be their bedroom.

We've inherited this "house" after my beloved MIL died of breast cancer last year. She was ill for awhile, even when she bought the property, so it's been many years that any love and repair has happened here. The property is actually two flats that we want to turn back into one home. This potential bedroom is the upstairs lounge.

There are tobacco-stained blinds. The lining paper on the walls is coming away at the seams. The mankiest carpet you could dream of is on the floor. The boys' toys and things are all in storage, and they are sleeping in a small, spare room downstairs until we can sort this room out.

Now let me tell you about our boys.

They are your average, standard curious, adventurous, boisterous kids. They love superheroes, catching bugs, and learning new things.

Last year, our oldest had a near-drowning accident while on holiday with other family. I couldn't get to him as it was abroad, and it was agony knowing he was laying in that hospital bed hundreds of miles away and and I couldn't comfort him. It was the worst thing I've ever been through as a parent. Then, our youngest ended up in hospital with suspected meningitis. It wasn't, thank god, but it was a horrible virus in which he spent 3 weeks as an in-patient, poorly in his big hospital bed right around Christmas.

I've given you the background story because I want to explain why I so desperately want to give these boys the best, coolest, most amazing bedroom they deserve after all the change/disaster/stress they've recently been through.

I want to make it "Discovery Towers," painted in greens and yellows. I want them to have beds with canopies over, and their own torches bedside, so they are "camping" every night. I want to give them a soothing alarm clock with jungle sounds. I want to get the carpet up to reveal the original oak wooden floors underneath, and then lay down massive, over-sized beanbag chairs for them to plop themselves down in. I want a telescope at the window so they can look at the stars, or perhaps pretend they're in a pirate ship and can shout "Land Ahoy!" I want to give them a Discovery Lab set up in the corner, so DS2 can develop his inner mad scientist, with books on bugs and rocks and archaeology tools. I want to give them a quiet "den" in the corner, with soft floor pillows, books, reading lights and throw blankets, so if they need to escape reality and bad dreams, they can.

I want to give them a Bedroom Plus. It would mean the world to them, (and to me, as their mum!)

[Solo]

Well, I'm having to have my extremely neglected and overgrown garden cleared professionally (again) as my ME won't allow me the energy to do it myself.
After 20 years living here and a constant battle with an estate overlooking my garden/house...their broken household appliances being thrown into my garden along with their rubbish, old car parts, used condoms and bottles of urine and me spending lots of money having it sorted out again and again over the years, it seems to have slowed down and I'm hoping that the culprits have grown up or moved away. I have not touched it at all for 8 years except to put a shed up for my household overflow!

The garden clearance is going to cost me £2000 and I had hoped that I could have sorted the garden into a little paradise as well as clearance for that money, but no! so I will have a clear garden area, but no 'garden' until I can find the money to do it and that may be years away!
Neither of my Dc's have ever been able to play in my garden and my Ds is almost 16 :( my Dd is 7.6 and there is still time for her if I could get it done.
So for me an extra £1000 would mean that I could have my garden made into a proper area for my children to play and socialise and for me to relax outside on a warm summers evening and to get my veggie patch started!!!
I'm hoping to have an area that is relaxing and private with a place to eat. A play area with turf and a veggie patch for us to grow vegetables. It's not much to ask for, but feels a million miles away right now.

[aJumpedUpPantryBoy]

I'd put the money towards a new kitchen. I love to cook but while my kitchen is spacious the design is poor and the cabinets are both cheap and ancient.
My sink doesn't fit properly, it moves when you use it and is really hard to keep clean, so one of the things I'd have in my new kitchen is a beautiful Belfast sink.

[todayisnottheday]

I would like to add a conservatory for space but my dream, which I couldn't afford whilst it will still be useful, would be to convert our garage. You can't get a car down the drive so the garage would make a fantastic teen hang out/annex now my tots are teens

A small job really but would make a massive difference for the whole family!

[Scousadelic]

We have a little verandah on the front of our house: When the house was built it would have been a lovely quiet little corner to sit in the afternoon sunshine and read. As the years have passed the road outside has grown from being a small seaside road to being a main A road with constant traffic and it always seems too noisy and too breezy to sit there.

I would use the money to glass the front of this in and make a quiet area to sit, read, listen to music or just relax in. It would be a relatively small area that could be make a huge change to the house

[Lagertha]

We would love to do up our bedroom to be a special retreat for us. We want a "sunk in" bed so we could quite literally fall into bed and the end of the day. It's that or alternatively I would install some form of sprinkler system to dh's alarm clock. So when he doesn't get up he can feel the full extent of my wrath (it also saves him time showering)

[DrFunkesFamilyBandSolution]

I've got the crazy notion of creating a mini playground area in our (small) back garden!
We've decided on doing it just outside the dining room, so the kitchen window (sink!) overlooks it, an will use cat/fox poo proof/washable flooring, attach outdoor kitchen toys (made from pallets) to the wall, have a slide and a little pirate ship decking area. What garden is complete without a plastic telescope & anchor?!

Most importantly Parents in law think it sounds tacky they're not allowed to play over!

[Shakey1500]

I would hire Robert Downey Jr for however long £1000 would get me (half an hour you reckon?). He could stand in my lounge and decorate it by his very presence

Seriously I would buy a new sofa. Mine is falling apart.

[Flufflewuffle]

I would buy blackout blinds for the main and second bedrooms. Just a few more hours of sleep! [smil
And I'd fix up the porch covering. It needs to be painted and had some bits that need repairing.
If there was anything left, I'd paint my front door black and get a large silver knocker for it. Lovely!

[steppemum]

well, my home plus would cost a lot more that 1,000, but as we are in to dreaming, I will say it anyway.

We want to foster, have always wanted to foster, we have a big house, 4 beds, but 3 kids, who have a room each.

We can't foster unless we can do something radical to create an extra bedroom. Loft extension, move walls in current bedrooms. (not easy as supporting walls are inconveniently in the wrong place.

I don't even know what we could do.

Maybe we could use the 1,000 to bribe my dds into sharing again!

[flamingtoaster]

I'd love to flatten a bit of our garden (it slopes dreadfully) and put in a shed (well one with lots of windows) that DH could use for his watercolour painting and could also be used when it's not quite warm enough to sit in the garden.

[itsnothingoriginal]

Yes my house dreams also revolve around a garden makeover too. All the things I would love but just can't afford like a shed, properly designed borders and some decent fencing. My house needs a lot of work too but my garden is my passion so would be amazing to bring my outdoor plans to life

[PotatoPolly]

I'd like to put the money towards a deposit to buy a house of our own, that I could create my own designs for!