Nobody on Mount Eliza got much of a sleep-in after Sunday night. One day after the main ensuite scores landed, five still-bruised teams pulled their boots on for what every single one of them is calling the most important week of the build: living, dining and alfresco week. These are the rooms with the view, the rooms that are supposedly going to sell the house on auction day, and the rooms nobody can afford to get wrong twice in a row.
Key Moments Today
- DISASTERCSR delivers the wrong grade of insulation to Rick and Tayla, R2.7 batts instead of R4, wiping out most of their day: “I’m just walking around sucking wet farts at this point,” Rick said.
- DISASTERRosco’s outdoor wall lights get measured off the waterproofing membrane instead of the finished floor, leaving them sitting at head height with no way to move them now the cladding’s on.
- RIDICULOUS PURCHASERick and Tayla’s winners dinner nets a $10,000 cheque from sponsor Chery and a night at Hotel Sorrento, capped off by a spirited, deeply off-key piano performance Scott Cam personally shuts down after three attempts.
- DRAMACourtney and Sev’s original $15,245 Christian Cole dining table commission gets killed by budget reality, so they go back for a scaled-down roughly $7,000 piece anyway, vowing to eat two minute noodles for three weeks to afford it.
It’s also Easter Monday, which on The Block means one thing: penalty rates. Most teams kept their tradies home to protect the budget, except Adam and Jolene, who decided the view was worth paying for. “This week really picks up our view, it’s so important,” they said, bringing plasterers and chippies in on the public holiday to get a head start on a living room built around a large comfy couch, a wood fireplace and a floor to ceiling mirror designed to bounce the city and ocean view back into the room.
The public holiday caused its own chaos regardless of who was paying for it. Rick and Tayla, fresh off their first win of the season, were promised an insulation delivery from CSR and instead got handed the wrong grade entirely: R2.7 batts where R4 was ordered, meaning zero usable insulation and a day spent going nowhere. “I’m just walking around sucking wet farts at this point,” was how Rick summed up eight hours of standing around waiting for a phone call to get sorted. Chantel and Wyatt had a milder version of the same problem, with their own delivery arriving late enough to leave Wyatt kicking around most of the afternoon before he could finally start batting the ceiling.
Over at Lisa and Rosco’s, a much smaller decision came back to bite them. Rosco had measured the outdoor wall lights off the waterproofing membrane instead of the finished floor level, so once the cladding went up, the lights ended up sitting at head height for anyone over average height. With the holes already drilled and the cladding already screwed and glued to the battens, there was no undoing it, just a lot of “who measured the outdoor lights?” going around the site.
Rick and Tayla, meanwhile, got to swap the wet-fart smell for Hotel Sorrento. The winners dinner is the one genuine perk of taking out a room, and Scott Cam made sure they knew it: a $10,000 cheque from sponsor Chery, an overnight stay Tayla called “next level,” and the offer to ask him anything, since insider information is “the privilege of winning.” The night wrapped with a spirited, deeply off-key piano performance that Scott Cam personally shut down after three attempts.
Back on site, Courtney and Sev’s dining table dreams took a budget-shaped hit. Their original plan to commission a bespoke Christian Cole table, quoted at $15,245 and literally spray-painted onto the floor by the man himself, got killed once the numbers caught up with them. Rather than walk away entirely, they went back for a scaled-down piece worth roughly $7,000, a decision Sev described as needing to “live off two minute noodles for the next three weeks” to afford. Next door, Chantel and Wyatt defended their decision to hang the TV on the opposite wall to every other house, offering Scott Cam three reasons for the call; kitchen sightlines and dinner-table etiquette landed, the natural-light argument did not.
Adam and Jolene spent part of the day trying to reverse-engineer the judges themselves, googling “what are the block judges looking for” and mapping their build against what they found: texture for Darren Palmer’s feature wall obsession, a wood fireplace to tick Marty Fox’s box, and storage they admit they “haven’t worked out just yet” for Shaynna Blaze. The day had a genuinely worrying moment too, with their plasterer Hayden sent off site after his heart rate spiked to 140 beats a minute and wouldn’t come back down. The team said they were “a bit worried” and hopeful he’d be back on the tools later in the week.
Three rooms, one view, and a whole lot of budget anxiety still to work through. We’ll be back tomorrow as living, dining and alfresco week starts to take shape properly.
