The Half-Point Nail-Biter: Courtney and Grant Pip Ricky and Haydn While Maddy and Charlotte’s Laundry Can’t Even Be Lifted

Right, Let’s Set the Scene

Interiors are done, people. Every last laundry, guest bedroom and powder room on Phillip Island has finally been tiled, painted and, in at least one case, not actually finished at all. Scotty rolled up looking like a man who’s just been let off school camp early, because from next week it’s landscaping, sunshine, Freedom vouchers and the sweet, sweet absence of anyone arguing about wardrobe joinery ever again.

But before anyone gets to enjoy $10,000 of outdoor furniture, there was one last interiors reveal to survive, and it was a shocker for at least one team. We’re talking paint fights, a door latch installed backwards on purpose (allegedly), a laundry two grown women couldn’t physically pick up, and a judging panel that spent half the episode arguing with itself about whether a lift counts as a red flag. Buckle in.

Final Score Card

Rank	Team	Score	Judges’ Verdict
🥇 1st	Courtney and Grant (House 2)	29.5	“No-one does Moditerranean. Courtney and Grumpy have actually created their own look.”
🥈 2nd	Ricky and Haydn (House 3)	29	“Now, this is a laundry.”
🥉 3rd	Kylie and Brad (House 4)	22.5	“That is not storage for everyday clothing, underwear, socks.”
4th	Kristian and Mimi (House 5)	20.5	“You cannot fault the look and feel of this room, but it’s actually working against what is a functional floor plan.”
5th	Maddy and Charlotte (House 1)	20	“So, I think we can all agree this room’s unfinished.”

Half. A. Point. That’s the entire margin between first and second place, and it came down to Phil the bonus point penguin finally getting off the bench after four weeks in the naughty corner. Courtney and Grant take the win, the $10,000 from Ford, and a very smug Ford winery getaway. Meanwhile Maddy and Charlotte close out interiors dead last, again, with a room the judges politely described as “unfinished,” which is generous phrasing for “we physically could not lift the thing we built.”

Maddy and Charlotte: The Laundry They Couldn’t Even Lift

Five weeks into their House 1 tenure and the honeymoon is officially over. Maddy and Charlotte combined their laundry and powder room into a mudroom-slash-guest-retreat setup, complete with an elevated built-in bunk bed that needed sign-off from an actual structural engineer because of council regulations around the height. Ambitious? Sure. Finished? Absolutely not.

The judges walked in split right down the middle. Darren was smitten with the self-contained “second wing” concept, bathroom, kitchenette minus a cooktop, own lounge, two entrances and room for a future lift. Marty was having none of it, circling back again and again to the same flat refusal.

“They’re trying to cover too many markets, and I don’t feel this does it well enough. I just… I don’t.”

Then came the laundry, where the debate stopped being philosophical and became painfully literal, the girls admitted they physically couldn’t lift a key piece into place that morning. Darren was diplomatic about the tiles and marble, but the room’s fate was sealed the moment Marty summed it up for everyone.

“So, I think we can all agree this room’s unfinished.”

Darren even admitted the bedroom would’ve been a perfect ten “if it wasn’t for the paint and the lack of finish”, which is judge-speak for “so close, so very close, so completely not close at all.” A last-place 20 points sealed it. Emotionally drained doesn’t begin to cover it.

Courtney and Grant: Rog Bog Paint, Penguin Luck, and a Half-Point Win

House 2 called this one “rocky,” and honestly, undersold it. Following the judges’ feedback from last week, Grant and Courtney reworked their mezzanine to carve out a second main suite, smart move, given the judges had previously called their layout a categorical real estate issue. The execution, though, nearly didn’t survive the paint stage.

“Do you know how hard it is? You chose the green paint.”

Grant’s olive green commentary escalated fast, from “this is what comes out of me after a big night” to the now-legendary “Court, this looks like a rog bog,” which earned him the silent treatment and a very pointed “if you worked at your pace, we’d be still painting the laundry.” Reader, they made up in time for judging.

And it paid off. Judges gushed over the Kinsman wardrobes, the sliding door fix, the “Moditerranean” colour scheme, and dropped the kind of comparison that makes contestants go weak at the knees.

“No-one does Moditerranean. So, Courtney and Grumpy have actually created their own look, their own feel that is unique, that is so high level and sets them apart. And it will set trends around the country just like Steph and Gian.”

The laundry copped a minor note about a missing toilet and a long walk from the pool, but it wasn’t enough to stop the sweep. Phil the bonus point penguin finally got a run, his first appearance in four weeks, and it was exactly the half-point Courtney and Grant needed to steal top spot from Ricky and Haydn.

Ricky and Haydn: The Laundry of the Day (Finally, Some Redemption)

After weeks of scraping the bottom of the leaderboard, Ricky and Haydn have properly found their groove. Confident enough in their progress that they knocked off early Saturday for a pub session with builder Duncan, an ex-Blockhead descended, in Scotty’s words, “from the heavens” to rescue the boys’ build quality. They toasted to “a win and tens tomorrow.” Bold call. Nearly nailed it.

The bedroom, styled with Grafico wallpaper and now sleeping 12 people across the whole house, the most accommodation on The Block this year, had judges cooing about “Hungry Hungry Hippo” energy and “the house of fun.” Marty’s only note was a missing ceiling fan.

“Now, this is a laundry.”

That laundry, gorgeous floor tiles, a mudroom, a powder room the judges called “massive”, earned the unofficial title of laundry of the day. It also earned Shaynna’s second ten of the night. In the end, it wasn’t quite enough to overtake Courtney and Grant, but a runner-up finish on 29 points, after weeks stuck near the bottom, is still their best result of the season.

Kylie and Brad: The Black-and-White Obsession That Just Won’t Die

Kylie and Brad went into this one still smarting from a second-last finish on Living and Dining Week. The plan: a daybed by the pool window in the mezzanine bedroom, and yet another all-black-and-white laundry, because apparently the definition of insanity is doing the exact same colour scheme and expecting a different result.

The bedroom copped it hardest. The wardrobe had drawers but no proper storage for “everyday clothing, underwear, socks,” the lighting was placed so badly you had to stand on the bedside table to open the wardrobe, and the whole space had a cathedral-like echo that made the judges’ voices bounce off the walls mid-critique.

“That is not storage for everyday clothing, underwear, socks.”

Marty was baffled by the regression given how far they’d come in the kitchen and main bedroom. Then the laundry doubled down on monochrome with black-and-white pegs Kylie and Brad had apparently spent actual time colour-matching.

“The obsession with the black and white has to end.”

Brad’s post-judging debrief was about as raw as it gets on this show: “Why do we even bother?” A third-place finish on 22.5 wasn’t a disaster by leaderboard standards, but the mood in House 4 said otherwise.

Kristian and Mimi: The Backwards Door Latch and the Bedroom That Should’ve Been a Rumpus

Kristian and Mimi swapped their floor plan last week, turning their pool-adjacent guest bedroom into a rumpus room and their old rumpus into this week’s guest bedroom, a decision judges hated from the moment it was announced, and one they refused to let go of all episode. With no tiler on hand, builder Dan ended up cutting and laying tiles himself while Kristian assisted, admitting on camera he had “no idea” how to tile.

Walking in, judges immediately clocked the door latch installed backwards, sparking a genuine on-the-spot debate about whether it was a clever forced fix or a straight-up blunder.

“They’ve deliberately put that on the wrong way so it didn’t hit that wall.”

Turns out it wasn’t deliberate at all, just Kristian. But the bigger issue was the floor plan itself: a bedroom sitting opposite a communal area full of glazing, with zero connection to the pool and lifestyle outside.

“This should have been the downstairs rumpus. It is an error. It’s definitely a mistake.”

Shaynna conceded it was a gorgeous room on looks alone, with a banana-and-sage palette she genuinely loved, but “gorgeous but is it right?” summed up the whole verdict. Fourth place on 20.5 points, with the added sting of Marty and Shaynna calmly explaining, room by room, exactly how the whole house’s floor plan logic had unravelled.

How It All Wrapped Up

Courtney and Grant snuck the win by half a point on the strength of a bonus penguin and a room the judges called trend-setting; Ricky and Haydn finally hit their stride with the laundry of the day and their best score of the season; Kylie and Brad got roasted for recycling a black-and-white theme nobody asked for again; Kristian and Mimi paid the price for ignoring the judges’ floor plan advice from the week before; and Maddy and Charlotte closed out interiors dead last with a room so unfinished they couldn’t even physically lift the furniture into it. Interiors are officially done, folks, from here it’s all backyards, budgets and Ford giveaways.

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