Week six, and for the first time all season the Blockheads have to present a bedroom and a bathroom in the same reveal. Twice the rooms means twice the stress, and that’s before you factor in the small matter of house five turning up to Monday’s pre-start meeting with a completely different lineup.
Key Moments Today
- DRAMARick is discharged from hospital, then immediately decides to go straight home to rest instead of back to site: “I’m going. Home. Until it gets better.”
- ARGUMENTScott confronts Tayla over blowing her $20,000 living and dining budget by $30,000, right down to $349 cash on pillows and $563 on bowls, plates and napkins: “What’s wrong with you?”
- DRAMATayla dumps her real estate agent, last year’s winning agent Mark Nunn, over the phone mid-build, replacing him with a stranger she matched with over matching four-leaf clover tattoos: “That was scarier than divorcing my husband.”
- ARGUMENTAdam and Wyatt go to war over a stack of PVC angle, each accusing the other of pinching it off site, before conceding neither of them actually needed it in the first place.
The headline change nobody saw coming: Rick’s knee infection has kept him off site, and rather than push through, he’s packing up and heading home to recover properly, leaving Tayla to run guest suite week without her dad for the first time all season. Filling the gap is Block royalty, 2018 alum and self-described “man of all trades” Spence, brought in by site super Aidan as Tayla’s temporary “surrogate father” and immediately nicknamed Captain Spence. The advice from Tayla’s fellow contestants for her new offsider ranged from “ride the wave, bro” to a flat “run,” which tells you everything about what Spence signed up for.
Foreman Dan is also off the tools this week, on leave after the arrival of baby Fletcher, with Leonie Akhidenor stepping in as his replacement. She got a warm welcome from Courtney and Sev, who were, in their words, excited for “some female energy” on site, and by the sound of it Leonie is already a hit: “She’s so much nicer than Dan,” according to Tayla.
Money was the other running theme of the day. Scott pulled Tayla aside for a very public dressing-down over last week’s living and dining spend, a $20,000 budget that somehow became $49,950 in cash, with Spence standing awkwardly beside her for the whole thing. “You’re spending cash when you shouldn’t be spending cash,” Scott warned, before Tayla insisted she was reining it in for guest suite week. Whether Captain Spence can actually enforce that is another question entirely, and even he wasn’t making promises: asked if he was worried about keeping her in check, his answer was a very unconvincing “I guess not.”
Tayla also found time for a genuine bombshell of her own making, sacking real estate agent Mark Nunn, who sold last year’s winning house for Britt and Taz, over a disagreement about her herringbone floorboards. His replacement, Ash Marton, won her over largely because they both happen to have matching four-leaf clover tattoos, which is either fate or the least conventional hiring process in real estate history. Tayla rated the phone call worse than “divorcing my husband,” which is a genuinely alarming benchmark for a business break-up.
Elsewhere, Adam and Jolene enjoyed the spoils of their first room win with a Chery-sponsored night away at Jackalope on the Mornington Peninsula, working through a tasting menu that included smoked eel and caviar Adam wasn’t thrilled about (“fish eggs definitely pushed me over the edge”). Back on site, Lisa and Rosco farewelled son Lando after his weekend visit, with Chantel getting visibly emotional watching another team’s toddler and missing her own kids. And in the pettiest subplot of the day, Adam and Wyatt spent a chunk of the afternoon accusing each other of stealing a stack of PVC angle, a dispute that ended, as these things do, with Adam handing it back and admitting he didn’t actually need it.
Guest suite week is only one day old and it’s already down a dad, up a Spence and short several thousand dollars in cash. Back tomorrow for waterproofing, or whatever Tuesday decides to throw at them instead.
