Kristian and Mimi Go Back-to-Back While House Three’s Ceiling Falls Apart

Right, Let’s Set the Scene

Two weeks into Phillip Island and tent city is officially cooked. Portashowers are getting unplugged mid-lather, Haydn’s dreaming of hot water like it’s a long-lost lover, and the general vibe is “please, for the love of god, give us a door that closes.” This week it’s guest bedrooms, specifically kids’ rooms, because nothing says “luxury coastal holiday home” like a bunk bed and a beanbag that someone’s about to eat concrete over.

Last week Kristian and Mimi snuck home a win by half a point, which is the reality TV equivalent of winning on a photo finish nobody can actually see. This week, three teams knocked off early and went to the pub. Two teams did not. Guess which strategy paid off, and guess which one ended with someone forging a demolition permit and someone else nearly losing a friendship over a game of Scattergories.

Final Score Card

Rank	Team	Score	Judges’ Verdict
🥇 1st	Kristian & Mimi	28 points	“This is a boutique hotel in Phillip Island.”, Shaynna Blaze
🥈 2nd	Courtney & Grant	27.5 points	“This doesn’t feel like week two.”, Shaynna Blaze
🥉 3rd	Jesse & Paige	27 points	“This just goes, ‘Whoa, I’m here.’”, Shaynna Blaze
4th (equal)	Ricky & Haydn	22 points	“This feels like a retrofit of a Phillip Island home.”, Shaynna Blaze
4th (equal)	Kylie & Brad	22 points	“It feels like art deco, but it doesn’t say beach to me.”, Shaynna Blaze

Kristian and Mimi have now gone back-to-back, and it was tight at the top, half a point separated first from second, and half a point separated second from third. Basically Darren Palmer’s mood swing on any given morning could have flipped this whole thing. Down the other end, Ricky and Haydn and Kylie and Brad tied for dead last on 22, a full five points adrift of the podium, which on The Block is basically a different postcode.

Jesse and Paige: The Duck That Saved a Marriage

After last week’s bathroom disaster (dark, moody, “mid-2010s nightclub vibe”, thanks Marty), Jesse and Paige needed a bounce-back week, and the universe decided to test them first with a genuine relationship crisis over a piece of artwork. Paige, by her own admission, “can’t tell anyone what I like because I don’t know the words,” which is a hard place to be styling from when your partner is standing over your shoulder demanding decisions in real time.

“I can’t make decisions when you’re complaining. I can’t.”

What followed was a genuinely tense back-and-forth over exactly where to hang a duck painting from Anna Blatman (“I saw it, and I saw my whole life in it,” Paige said, not being remotely dramatic about it), ending with Jesse stepping in to hang it himself and a slightly passive-aggressive “See, I’m not complaining. See how easy that is?” Somewhere in there, Paige also dropped a genuine “You’re such a BLEEP”, which, fair.

But here’s the twist: it worked. The judges walked into a finished, styled, cohesive room for the first time this season and lost their minds a bit. Darren said the room “really does” give him a sense of who Jesse and Paige are, unlike last week. Shaynna called the wallpaper “phenomenal” and declared the whole thing “a modern colonial”, a style name Paige had been agonising over for a week, handed to her on a plate. Marty said it was “night and day from last week,” a “massive win,” and that the whole thing was “sexy” and “classy.” 27 points and a genuine turnaround, duck and all.

Courtney and Grant: Cute as Heck, Minus the Air Con

Two people with no kids built the best kids’ room on the block this week, which is either impressive or slightly concerning depending on how you look at it. Courtney and Grant went full pistachio-green-and-stripe combo with an arched bedhead, cloud-shaped lighting and a “drawing nook” that made Marty want to move his own daughters in immediately.

“I can’t rave enough about this room.”

Marty called it “unfaultable,” Shaynna said it delivered “personality in spades” and declared the room felt like “week seven,” not week two. Darren’s only real gripe was a decorative piece placed exactly where someone’s toe was going to find it in the dark, “You’re gonna break your toe. Bingo.” Along with Jesse and Paige, they copped a ding for having zero heating or cooling in the room, which Marty warned could genuinely cost them with buyers on a hot Phillip Island night. Still, 27.5 points and a very, very close second.

Ricky and Haydn: Ricky’s Roasting, Courtesy of a Collapsing Ceiling

House three had it rough from the jump. A paint shortage the night before pushed everything back, trades got stacked up outside the door, and foreman Dan finally lost it when the plaster ceiling came back looking, in his words, like something you’d get “a better finish on a cake.” Holes around the easygen, visible scratches, a “junction” nobody could identify, Ricky summed up their odds as “slim to none” before judging had even started.

“I’ll be honest, I reckon it’s a whole new re-do.” “You see a better finish on a cake, Dan.”

The bunkbeds and the Grafico animal-map wardrobe genuinely landed with Darren and Shaynna, but Marty wasn’t sold on the layout (“claustrophobic,” he called it, wanting the bunks flipped to the other wall), and the plaster issues followed them straight into judging. Shaynna’s verdict, “this feels like a retrofit of a Phillip Island home”, was about as polite a way as possible of saying it looked bolted on. Marty went further: “third room in a row where we don’t have heating and cooling,” and told them flat out to bring more emotional connection given Haydn had just become a first-time dad. 22 points, equal last, and a very pointed pep talk from Marty about working “harder and smarter.”

Kylie and Brad: Black, Peach, Black Again

After getting hammered for a black bathroom last week, Kylie did what any reasonable person does under pressure: pivoted 180 degrees to a soft Summer Peach colour scheme, got most of the way there, then, after a Scott Cam pep talk about sticking to your vision, swung the whole thing back toward black again, headboard trim and all. “No one wants a black bedroom,” Kylie reasoned, immediately followed by, “They haven’t seen it yet, so how do they know?”

“It feels like art deco, but it’s not working because it’s not an art deco place.”

The judges were split down the middle, which is somehow worse than everyone agreeing. Marty loved it, called it “palatable,” “marketable,” and said the fundamentals were “great.” Darren and Shaynna were not on board, feeling the room didn’t belong on a coastal island and that Kylie had toned herself down so much the personality had gone missing. Shaynna’s pointed question, “Do you love the room? Like, absolutely bottom of your heart love the room?”, landed a soft “It’s alright” from Kylie, which is not the answer you want to be giving a judge holding a scorecard. One genuine bright spot: they were the only house all season with floorboards and a ceiling fan, and Shaynna noticed. 22 points, equal last, and a very clear “pivot, and fast” instruction heading into week three.

Kristian and Mimi: Back-to-Back Champions Who Still Can’t Find a Decent Stick

Kristian and Mimi’s week was, structurally, a mess: a demolition permit signature Kristian admits to forging on their behalf (“So, I made a boo-boo today. A big boo-boo”), a plumbing pipe that ate half a cupboard, dodgy insulation, and duct tape used where actual sealing tape should have gone. And yet, somehow, the finished room was, per the judges, the best thing built on Phillip Island so far.

Meanwhile the real crisis of the week was botanical. Mimi spent a full day trawling Phillip Island homeware shops for a “dry” stick to put in a decorative pot, came home empty-handed, and returned to find Kristian had decided the solution was simply ripping a branch off a tree near the resort fence line.

“The fence is there for a reason. Stop breaking rules.” “Mimi, that’s a living tree. You need something that’s dead.”

Sticks aside, the room itself was a genuine hit. Shaynna called it “a boutique hotel in Phillip Island,” loved the asymmetry and the felted bedhead. Marty said the craftsmanship was “very hard to fault” and that if they kept it up, “these guys are gonna be extremely hard to beat.” Darren had one nitpick about light switch placement but was otherwise won over. 28 points, back-to-back wins, and Mimi, who earlier this episode confessed her mum “thinks that I am a disappointment”, bursting into tears on the win because apparently she’s “a bad winner” who “hates” the guilt of beating her mates.

How It All Wrapped Up

Kristian and Mimi banked their second win in a row on 28 points despite a forged permit and a genuinely feral hunt for the right dead stick; Courtney and Grant built the block’s best kids’ room without owning a single child and missed the top spot by half a point; Jesse and Paige turned a duck-fuelled screaming match into their best week yet and finally found a name for their style; Ricky and Haydn watched their ceiling get roasted alongside their scorecard and tied for last; and Kylie and Brad flip-flopped from black to peach to black again and landed exactly nowhere, splitting the judges and tying for last on 22.

Grab a coffee, get comfortable, and we’ll see you back here for the next disaster.