Right, Let’s Set the Scene
Living and dining week is the one Block producers have been building to all season, the biggest rooms, the biggest budgets, and, this year, the biggest gyprock shortage in the show’s history. Five plasterers standing around at $80 an hour with nothing to plaster is not what you’d call efficient use of Channel Nine’s money, but here we are. Scott Cam, in a rare fit of guilt, actually covered the cost of the wasted day AND sent every team a professional painter from Hipages for two days. Genuinely unheard of. Twenty seasons in and Scotty’s finally learned that throwing tradies at a problem beats throwing another challenge at it.
Naturally, the goodwill lasted about as long as it takes Kristian to have an existential crisis (roughly four minutes). What followed was a week of stolen Venetian plasterers, an all-nighter that produced a room the judges called “no sophistication whatsoever,” and one team dropping ten and a half grand on stone just to make sure their fireplace looked expensive enough to justify the ulcer. Buckle in.
Final Score Card
| Rank | Team | Score | Judges’ Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 1st | Kylie & Brad | 29.5 | “This room sings.”, Shaynna Blaze (mid-opera note) |
| 🥈 2nd | Courtney & Grant | 26.5 | “This feels absolutely consistent. I love every decision in here.”, Darren Palmer |
| 🥉 3rd | Maddy & Charlotte | 25.5 | “I really feel the styling has completely let them down.”, Shaynna Blaze |
| 4th | Ricky & Haydn | 25 | “None of the other homes have this amount of square meterage within this living space.”, Marty Fox |
| 5th | Kristian & Mimi | 23.5 | “There is no sophistication within this space whatsoever.”, Marty Fox |
Just three points separated first from last, but the story of the week was really a tale of two extremes: Kylie and Brad’s stonemason splurge landing them a near-perfect 29.5 (two straight tens, from Marty and Shaynna both), and Kristian and Mimi’s TV-first lounge room copping the harshest review of the season, “the biggest letdown of the day,” according to Marty. Ouch.
Key Moments This Episode
- DISASTER The biggest gyprock delivery of the season gets cancelled, leaving five plasterers standing around on $80 an hour doing absolutely nothing while Scott Cam quietly foots the bill.
- DRAMA Courtney spots Maddy and Charlotte’s Venetian plasterer Elias, quietly walks him down the street to poach him for house two, and doesn’t bother mentioning it to the neighbours first.
- ARGUMENT Grant flatly refuses to let anyone borrow house two’s Venetian plasterer even after he’s finished for the day: “Stuff them. We’re saying straight up no.” Charlotte’s response: “What the (BLEEP) is wrong with you?”
- ARGUMENT House one’s plasterers get mobbed by house two’s entire crew hoping to tag along for a freebie. Grant asks Dan if the whole team can pile in. Answer: “Get your own plasterers.”
- RIDICULOUS PURCHASE Kylie and Brad drop $10,500 on stonemasons for a single Dekton fireplace feature wall, and it’s not even their first expensive Dekton disaster, having already binned a $700 tile earlier in the build.
- DISASTER Kristian and Mimi pull an all-nighter with zero paint on the walls at lunchtime, flat-packed dining chairs still in boxes, and furniture that needs to be hauled upstairs. Kristian: “This is a (BLEEP) nightmare.”
- RIDICULOUS PURCHASE Kristian casually mentions “everything that I’ve chosen is 75 grand”, for a room the judges then say has “no sophistication whatsoever.”
- DRAMA Shaynna Blaze literally sings opera walking into Kylie and Brad’s room (“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa”), the first time she’s ever done that on the show.
Maddy and Charlotte: The Venetian Plasterer Everyone Wanted
Maddy and Charlotte’s week started with the Venetian plastering equivalent of a bad Tinder date, their booked plasterer’s off-sider had insurance issues, leaving them stranded without a Venetian guy on Friday night at 5:30pm. Foreman Dan eventually rustled up a bloke named Elias, who agreed to do their feature wall around the flue. Naturally, this made him the most popular tradie on the street, and Courtney was spotted walking him down to house two for a chat about doing their wall too, without so much as a heads-up to the neighbours.
“If I was more confrontational, I would’ve been, like, ‘What are you doing?’ But I’m not… there’s just no way that they’re gonna steal our Venetian plasterer.”
Narrator voice: they absolutely tried. Charlotte and Maddy dug their heels in and refused to let Elias work anywhere else until their wall was done, fair enough, they were paying him four grand. On reveal day, the room itself impressed Marty (“one cohesive, warm room… elegant”) and he praised the strategic decisions, but Shaynna wasn’t feeling it at all, going as far as to say the styling had “completely let them down,” from a stray protea pointed the wrong way to a lamp so small it would make Neale Whitaker “lose his S-H-I-T.”
“It was a bit meh. Vanilla.”, the girls’ own verdict on the judges’ feedback
Third place with 25.5, a solid, unspectacular finish for a room the judges landed on the ice cream flavour of “vanilla with pistachio, if you’re lucky.”
Courtney and Grant: The Plasterer Heist and the Fireplace Nobody Can Use
Yes, house two are the villains of this episode’s B-plot, having quietly recruited Maddy and Charlotte’s Venetian plasterer mid-job. When Charlotte confronted Grant about lending him back, the answer was a hard no, delivered with all the warmth of a man defending his last Tim Tam. “You don’t own trades,” Grant reasoned, apparently forgetting he’d just spent the day trying to own someone else’s.
“You don’t own trades.”
Karma showed up in judging form. The room itself was a genuine hit, Darren Palmer called it “absolutely consistent” from bedroom to kitchen to living space and said he loved “every decision in here,” while Shaynna praised the pared-back palette and adored the dining chairs from Grant’s own business, The Lazy Stylist. But then came the fireplace placement, which Marty Fox absolutely torched.
“How they end up having a fireplace that is in possibly the worst position within a room of this size… nobody benefits from it. You sit at the end, it’s too hot. You’re sitting anywhere else, it’s hidden.”
Despite the fireplace fumble, a strong second place on 26.5, proof that stealing tradies and losing your soul a little bit can still pay off, apparently.
Ricky and Haydn: The Football-Oval Living Room That Still Finished Fourth
House three had, by Block standards, an almost suspiciously smooth week, fully painted early, scaffolding down on schedule, and even enough spare time for Ricky to teach Kylie and Brad how to safely start an indoor fire (a genuinely wholesome cross-house moment in an episode otherwise full of tradie theft). Their reward was the biggest living space of any house this season, at a genuinely absurd 75 square metres.
“This is a football oval!”
The judges were floored by the scale and the $20,000 artwork from the Cungelella Art Collective, with Marty calling the lounge pit “this little sanctuary.” But bigger rooms mean bigger problems: Shaynna felt the dining table should have been “double the width” to anchor the space properly, and both judges agreed the table’s orientation left the whole room feeling “a little bit tilted.”
“For me, that dining table is key for the success of this room… I agree it does feel a little bit tilted.”, Shaynna Blaze
A quietly frustrating fourth on 25 points, all that space and they still got outscored by four other, smaller rooms.
Kylie and Brad: The Ten-Grand Stone Gamble That Made Shaynna Sing Opera
Kylie and Brad went all in this week, sinking $10,500 into stonemasons for a mitred Dekton fireplace feature, a genuine roll of the dice given their history with the material (RIP the $700 tile that shattered earlier in the build for no discernible reason). “If they don’t love our fireplace this week… I’m gonna be pissed,” Kylie admitted before the install even happened.
It paid off spectacularly. Shaynna Blaze walked in and did something producers say she’s never done on the show before, burst into operatic song.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa… this room sings.”
Darren praised the not-a-single-downlight lighting layout, Marty called the custom Christian Cole table “magnificent,” and the judges settled on an ice cream flavour of licorice, divisive, but the ones who love it, love it hard. Two tens (Marty and Shaynna) and a final score of 29.5 sealed their second win of the season.
“Quite frankly, this has been my favourite room of The Block this season.”, Marty Fox
Kristian and Mimi: The Room That Was Built Entirely Around a TV
If there’s one couple who deserve a lie-down after this episode, it’s Kristian and Mimi. Their plastering saga dragged on for days, they were last in line for the Hipages painters, and by lunchtime on hand-in day they still had zero paint on their walls while flat-packed dining chairs sat in boxes waiting to be assembled from scratch. What followed was a genuine all-nighter, with Mimi physically taking Kristian off-site just to get him fed and breathing.
“That was the worst week of my whole (BLEEP) life.” “You say that every week.” “No, this was by far the worst.”
Unfortunately, all that suffering didn’t buy them a good result. Despite having genuinely won more prize money than anyone else on the season, the judges felt the room didn’t show it, Shaynna pointed out the entire layout was oriented around the television rather than the fireplace or view, and Marty was brutal about the missed opportunity.
“There is no sophistication within this space whatsoever… for me, it’s probably been the biggest letdown of the day.”
Shaynna summed it up even more brutally: “If the kitchen is the heart of the home and living and dining is the soul, this doesn’t have it.” A last-place finish on 23.5, their worst score of the entire season.
How It All Wrapped Up
Kylie and Brad took out the week with a near-perfect 29.5 thanks to their expensive but gorgeous Dekton fireplace gamble; Courtney and Grant landed second on 26.5 despite a fireplace placement Marty called “possibly the worst position” in any room this season; Maddy and Charlotte finished third on 25.5 after judges dubbed their styling “vanilla,” Venetian plasterer drama notwithstanding; Ricky and Haydn came fourth on 25 with the biggest living space of the season but a table orientation nobody could quite forgive; and Kristian and Mimi, after the roughest week of anyone’s season, finished last on 23.5 with the harshest review of the day. Grab a coffee, get comfortable, and we’ll see you back here for the next disaster.
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