Right, Let’s Set the Scene
Scott Cam looked five brand-new Blockheads dead in the eye during Tools Down and admitted it himself: “I threw everything at you guys this week, didn’t I?” A bathroom, in week one, on an island, in a 40-degree heatwave. Nothing says “welcome to reality TV” quite like handing amateur renovators the single hardest room in the house before they’ve even learned where the site dunny is.
By the time Sunday’s reveal rolled around we’d had a smashed toilet, a rogue uninsured glazier, an all-black bathroom that made Marty Fox reach for the word “disaster,” and an actual human baby born mid-build. One team didn’t even finish. Someone else made $12,000 worth of bath decisions with a straight face. Grab a towel, it’s about to get sweaty.
Final Score Card
| Rank | Team | Score | Judges’ Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 1st | Kristian & Mimi (House 5) | 28.5 points | “I just think the balance of tone and texture is incredible.”, Marty Fox |
| 🥈 2nd | Courtney & Grant (House 2) | Not read out on air | “The quality is off the charts. The layout is incredible.”, Shaynna Blaze |
| 🥉 3rd | Ricky & Haydn (House 3) | Not read out on air | “I think it’s a bloody good start. This is a cracking bathroom.”, Darren Palmer |
| 4th | Kylie & Brad (House 4) | 22 points | “This is going to be possibly the biggest disaster we’ve seen in 20 seasons.”, Marty Fox |
| 5th | Jesse & Paige (House 1) | Not read out on air (unfinished) | “They’re on The Block, you do everything that you can in your power to finish your room. And this is an unfinished room.”, Marty Fox |
Kristian and Mimi’s “zen” bathroom clocked 28.5 points and walked off with the full $140,000 haul, $10,000 cash from Ford, a $30,000 Wolf BBQ and a $100,000 Camerich voucher, while Kylie and Brad’s blackout bathroom limped in with 22. The other three scores weren’t read out on camera, but the pecking order was crystal clear from the judges’ body language alone: Courtney and Grant were the clubhouse leaders for most of the walkthrough, Ricky and Haydn held steady in the middle, and Jesse and Paige were never really in the conversation once the judges clocked the room was unfinished.
Key Moments This Episode
- DISASTER House 2’s brand-new toilet turns up smashed to bits. Grant, quite reasonably: “Honestly, how the (BLEEP) did they break the toilet?”
- ARGUMENT Courtney and Grant go to war with builder Doug after he let an uninsured glazier install the shower screen early, torching their Venetian plaster plan. “It’s not common practice.” “It is.” “It’s not.” Round and round it went.
- DISASTER Jesse and Paige work until 3AM Sunday and still don’t finish, with Jesse admitting “we fell short” at Tools Down, the only unfinished room of week one.
- DRAMA Jesse and Paige’s exhaustion boils over: “I’m just so sick of the constant doom and gloom from you… you haven’t been positive at all this whole (BLEEP) week.”
- DRAMA Haydn gets a phone call mid-build, wife Chelsea is in labour, and bolts off site by helicopter. Ricky finishes House 3’s entire bathroom solo and gets handed the honour of calling Tools Down himself.
- RIDICULOUS PURCHASE Ricky drops roughly $12,000 on a flute bath because, in his words, “it’s a damn good bath.”
- ARGUMENT The judges nearly come to blows over Courtney and Grant’s tonal palette. Shaynna wants more drama, Marty shuts down canary yellow flat: “It can’t be canary yellow.” “Why?” “Just white. It’s enough.” Scotty: “Ooh, horns are going to lock on this one.”
- RIDICULOUS PURCHASE Kylie goes full black-on-black-on-black and paints her own neon artwork for the walls, prompting Marty to call the whole room “possibly the biggest disaster we’ve seen in 20 seasons.”
Jesse and Paige: The Room That Never Made It To The Finish Line
House 1 decided, in true week-one optimism, to tile floor to ceiling in a room with an awkward external edge and a shower facing straight into a curved door. Ambitious. Also, as it turns out, a rod for their own back, Shaynna’s words, more or less, about the general practice of over-tiling on a seven-day deadline. Jesse and Paige finished waterproofing late, fell behind early, and by Saturday night were still hanging doors and installing tapware while everyone else was styling candles.
It got to them. By 3AM Sunday, Jesse conceded defeat in his own head, “maybe not”, and the exhaustion turned into a proper blue between the pair.
“I’m just so sick of, like, the constant, like, doom and gloom from you. Like, you haven’t been positive at all this whole (BLEEP) week.”
They walked into the reveal with an incomplete bathroom, and Marty Fox, who happens to know Jesse’s a qualified chippy, was in no mood to be generous about it.
“If they’re on The Block, you do everything that you can in your power to finish your room. And this is an unfinished room.”
Darren and Shaynna actually liked plenty of what they saw, the brushed chrome, the big-format tile, the underfloor heating, but “unfinished” is hard to argue your way out of. Last place, week one. There’s always next week, as Scotty reminded them on the way out the door.
Courtney and Grant: Sacked By Their Own Builder, Saved By The Tiles
Courtney and Grant’s week was, in Courtney’s own succinct summary, a “hot mess.” Their builders let an uninsured glazier install the shower screen before the tiling was even finished, standard practice, according to said builders; not standard practice, according to literally everyone else on site, including the actual tilers who had to work around it. The plasterers couldn’t finish the Venetian plaster as a direct result, forcing an emergency pivot to textured paint the night before reveal. Then, for good measure, someone managed to smash their brand-new toilet.
“Honestly, how the (BLEEP) did they break the toilet? What a disaster of a start this is.”
Somehow, out of all that chaos, they finished waterproofing at 1AM Friday and produced what the judges agreed was the standout bathroom of the week, right up until Shaynna and Marty started disagreeing about it in front of the cameras. Shaynna wanted more drama and personality; Marty wanted safe, sellable, and definitely not canary yellow.
“I don’t want to come to Phillip Island and be in Melbourne.”
Darren, ever the diplomat, agreed with both of them and neither of them at once. Shaynna still called the quality “off the charts,” which, considering the week they’d had, is a genuinely wild result. Second place, and every bit deserved after the week from hell.
Ricky and Haydn: One Dad Down, One Bathroom Up
House 3 started strong, plumber Ricky insisted on a bath (“you’ve got to have a bath… genius!”) and dropped roughly $12,000 on a flute bath because, quote, “it’s a damn good bath.” Fair enough, really. Then, mid-week, Haydn’s phone rang. Wife Chelsea was in early labour. “Well, it was waterproofing Wednesday and now it’s water-breaking Wednesday,” Ricky quipped, before Haydn was choppered off site to become a first-time dad.
That left Ricky solo for two days, double the painting, double the cleaning, and one impromptu backflip off a pier to clear the dust out of his sinuses, because apparently that’s a normal coping mechanism on The Block. He finished the room himself, and when Haydn made it back just in time for Tools Down, Scott Cam handed him the honour of calling it out, a Block first, according to the show itself.
“You did not build a bathroom, you built a human.”, Scott Cam to Haydn
The judges loved the layout and the bathtub, but Shaynna wasn’t holding back on the colour scheme: too many lines, mismatched tones, and, brutally, “a bit kindergarten.” Solid week one debut, undercut slightly by a colour palette that didn’t quite land. Third place.
Kylie and Brad: All Black, Everything, Including The Reviews
Kylie and Brad committed to a bit this week, and the bit was: black. “Black, black, black, black, black,” Kylie told the stylist, apparently without irony. Somewhere along the way the vanity turned out too big for the room, so the solution was simply to delete the bath entirely, “just delete the bath,” someone said, like that’s a normal sentence to say about a bathroom on a family holiday house. Kylie also hand-painted an original artwork in neon orange and pink, which she admitted might leave the judges thinking it’s “just horrendous.”
“This is going to be possibly the biggest disaster we’ve seen in 20 seasons.”, Marty Fox
Genuinely brutal from Marty, who reckoned the room was as far removed from a beach holiday as physically possible and worried buyers wouldn’t want to repaint doors just to feel at home. Shaynna, weirdly, adored it, “the first impact to me goes, phwoar, you have grabbed me”, and even praised the black toilet paper as one of the best things in the room. Darren sat in the middle, liking the dark palette but not the neon accents or the “mid-2010s nightclub” hanging lights. It’s a bathroom that split the panel down the middle and still only scraped 22 points. Fourth place, and a warning shot that black-on-black is a one-room gimmick, not a whole-house strategy.
Kristian and Mimi: The Zen Masters Who Actually Won
House 5 had the biggest bathroom on The Block this week, just over 10 square metres, and very nearly blew the advantage thanks to a solo tiler moving at what one team member called “watching paint dry” pace. “He better bring someone else tomorrow, otherwise we are (BLEEP),” was the mood on Saturday. Thankfully the tiler turned up with reinforcements, his own sons, and House 5 became the only team to hit Waterproof Wednesday on schedule.
A miscalculation on vanity height nearly derailed them too, the bowl depth wasn’t factored in, meaning everything had to drop 130mm at the last minute, but the team shrugged it off with genuine main-character energy.
“No biggie. I’ll keep smiling.”
It paid off. Marty called the space-to-function ratio a no-brainer for a family beach house, Darren praised the balance of tone and texture, and Shaynna, never one to hold back a compliment, said her feet were “starting to lift.” The only real criticism was a shower nook that felt a touch small for the size of the room. None of that mattered come scoring time: 28.5 points, the win, and the full $140,000 prize package.
“I just think the balance of tone and texture is incredible.”, Marty Fox
How It All Wrapped Up
Kristian and Mimi rode a chaotic build and a wobbly tiler all the way to a $140,000 week-one win with 28.5 points; Courtney and Grant survived their own builder’s worst instincts and a broken toilet to land second with the judges split down the middle; Ricky and Haydn delivered a genuinely lovely bathroom despite Ricky finishing it essentially solo while Haydn welcomed his first child; Kylie and Brad went all-in on black and copped Marty’s harshest line of the season for their trouble; and Jesse and Paige simply ran out of hours, handing over the season’s first unfinished room and a last-place finish to match.
Grab a coffee, get comfortable, and we’ll see you back here for the next disaster.
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