Halfway through the season, and Scott Cam marks the occasion by handing out two perfect tens, an “unsaleable” verdict, and a stray pot plant hiding under a desk. Five teams, five guest bedrooms and ensuites, one $10,000 Chery cheque, and a prize pool that just cracked $300,000. Welcome to week six.
| Rank | Team | Score | Judges’ Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 1st | Courtney and Sev | 29.5 | “This is truly a wing, a luxurious wing of the house, which just adds so much value.” (Marty) |
| 🥈 2nd | Adam and Jolene | 25.5 | “Good room. Not amazing. But it’s very homely.” (Marty) |
| 🥈 2nd | Chantel and Wyatt | 25.5 | “I come out of their rooms every time so underwhelmed. It’s clinical.” (Shaynna) |
| 🥉 3rd | Lisa and Rosco | 23.5 | “If I was just judging this bathroom, this would be my first ten. I can’t fault it.” (Marty) |
| 5th | Rick and Tayla | 17 | “This is terrible. It’s a passed-in home.” (Marty) |
Key Moments This Episode
- DISASTERRick and Tayla’s guest suite lands the season’s harshest verdict yet: “This is terrible. It’s a passed-in home.”
- RIDICULOUS PURCHASEShaynna finds not one but two random pot plants in Tayla’s home office, one wedged under the desk: “Why is there a plant under the desk?”
- ARGUMENTShaynna draws a hard line on Chantel and Wyatt’s mass-market strategy: “While they keep going clinical, they’ll never win a room from me.”
- DRAMACourtney and Sev land the first two tens of the season, Darren and Marty both scoring a perfect ten, for their third room win.
- DISASTERLisa and Rosco’s bedroom gets torn apart despite a bathroom Marty calls his first ten of the season: “It just feels like a bad hotel.”
- RIDICULOUS PURCHASEAdam and Jolene take out the CommBank Better Budgeting Award for the second time this season, landing within $2.10 of their own $17,000 estimate.
- DRAMAAdam braces for “grandma” jokes over his pink bird wallpaper, only for Darren to rebrand the whole house the “memoir interior.”
- DRAMAAt the exact halfway mark of the season, Scott reveals the prize pool has cracked $300,000, with a home gym and a backyard pod added to the pile.
Courtney and Sev, 29.5: The First Tens of the Season
Six days after their tiling nightmare, Courtney and Sev walk into judging with a guest suite so good it turns their bathroom review into a highlight reel of superlatives. A reversed door position frees up a wall of Freedom wardrobe storage, the private courtyard access earns comparisons to “a true second main suite,” and the Grafico-wallpapered bedhead has Shaynna and Marty agreeing it’s the room they’d rather sleep in over the pair’s own main bedroom from a few weeks back.
The bathroom is where the judges properly lose it. Marty calls the tile selection “beautiful,” the vanity “the best we’ve seen today,” and sums the whole suite up as “truly a wing, a luxurious wing of the house, which just adds so much value.” Darren and Marty each hand over a perfect ten, the first of the season, and the resulting 29.5 is enough to top the leaderboard outright. Add the $10,000 Chery cheque to a $20,000 Big Bickies bonus from Arnott’s for the two tens, and Courtney and Sev walk off with $30,000 for the week, their third room win.
Adam and Jolene, 25.5: The Memoir Interior
Adam and Jolene’s guest suite arrives with blush pink, maroon, and a trio of birds on the wall that Adam is visibly nervous the judges will read as “grandma’s come to stay.” Instead Darren coins a new label entirely: the “memoir interior,” a room built from things that “tell a story,” and one he reckons the pair have leaned on consistently all season. Shaynna agrees, praising the restraint after weeks of over-styling, though she does flag wasted hanging space in the wardrobe and suggests a rug wouldn’t have gone astray.
The ensuite fares just as well, Darren calling the tile choice “colour” with genuine enthusiasm and Marty rating the inclusions strong, minus a request for four different metal finishes to become one. A “good room, not amazing” from Marty and a 25.5 overall keeps House 1 mid-table, but the real prize of the day is elsewhere: Adam and Jolene take out the CommBank Better Budgeting Award for the second time this season, nailing their own $17,000 estimate within $2.10 and pocketing another $10,000 cash.
Chantel and Wyatt, 25.5: Playing It Safe, Splitting Opinion
Chantel and Wyatt’s guest suite is the week’s most divisive result. Darren calls it “a clever combination of traditional and contemporary” and Marty says it’s the kind of room where you just want to go to sleep, “which is great,” praising the block-out blinds and the sheer size of the wardrobe. Shaynna sees the exact same room and reaches the opposite conclusion, declaring it feels like “a display home in a development” and admitting she comes out of every one of their rooms “so underwhelmed.”
The ensuite splits the judges further, with Marty flagging a shower space narrower than House 1’s despite having more real estate to work with, calling the whole thing “a bit plain” and noting the pair are “clearly playing the mass market card.” Shaynna isn’t having it either way: “While they keep going clinical, they’ll never win a room from me.” A tied 25.5 puts them level with Adam and Jolene, and Marty’s read on the whole strategy sums up the split neatly: either it wins them The Block, or it falls flat for being too plain.
Lisa and Rosco, 23.5: A First Ten, Undone by Styling
For the first time all season, Lisa and Rosco walk into a room reveal with a completed bathroom, and it very nearly earns them the week’s top score on its own. Marty calls it his first ten of the season, praising the tile selection, the vanity, and the S-bend curtain detail, and admits he “can’t fault it.” It’s a stunning turnaround for a team who spent the past five weeks fighting glaziers.
The bedroom is a different story entirely. Marty finds the room “the most predictable approach” of the day, calling out an unnecessary study nook that eats into storage, and Shaynna is even blunter, branding it “really lazy styling” that “feels like a bad hotel.” Both judges agree the bones are good enough to save with a simple restyle, but a 23.5 overall leaves Lisa and Rosco stuck in third, their strongest room of the season undercut by their weakest.
Rick and Tayla, 17: “It’s a Passed-In Home”
With Rick still sidelined by his infected knee and Block All-Star Spence drafted in as a stand-in tradie, Tayla heads into judging leaning hard on a green Grafico wallpaper feature wall and a wardrobe of pampas grass. The judges do not see the vision. Darren is gentlest, noting the built form is “essentially very good” before conceding “so close, but not there.” Marty is not gentle at all, declaring “this is terrible,” rating the room “unsaleable,” and landing on the verdict that gives the recap its headline: “It’s a passed-in home.”
Most of the carnage is in the styling department, and Shaynna leads the charge, with Tayla caught out over an outdoor chair dragged inside, a leftover mirror propped against the curtains, and, most memorably, two separate pot plants she’d apparently smuggled indoors, including one bizarrely stashed under the desk. “Why is there a plant under the desk?” gets repeated by three different judges before Shaynna admits she genuinely can’t breathe from laughing. A 17 leaves House 5 rooted to the bottom of the leaderboard, and Tayla, watching her father take it all in from a video call, promises the team’s next move is simple: strip it back and start again.
Two tens, one “passed-in home,” and a prize pool that’s already ticked past $300,000 with the season only half done. Next week it’s kitchen week, the room every Blockhead says they actually want to win, so get comfortable, we’ll see you back here for the fallout.
