Kitchen week has arrived, the room every renovator says they actually want to win, and Scott Cam marks the occasion by revealing one house has a quarter of a million dollars in appliances alone. Everyone else gets a $20,000 budget and a Gyprock delivery that mostly doesn’t turn up. Balanced competition, as always.
Key Moments Today
- DISASTERZero Gyprock arrives site-wide except for Chantel and Wyatt’s, leaving Courtney and Sev scrambling before tomorrow’s kitchen install: “We’re in strife here.” Nine in Six ends up driving out to collect the sheets themselves.
- DRAMARick and Tayla’s plasterer, who’d been charging $15,000 a room, mysteriously matches a rival crew’s $6,500 quote the moment he’s threatened with losing the job: “He’s been taking us for a ride.”
- ARGUMENTChantel and Wyatt bolt for the gym straight after dinner again, dishes untouched, sparking a house-wide dressing down: “They think it’s a restaurant.”
- RIDICULOUS PURCHASERosco tries to shake down Courtney and Sev for a $500 late fee on their overdue tiling debt and settles for $20: “Sucks being a winner.”
Monday opens with Rick finally back on site after his knee infection, and straight into an awkward rewatch of Sunday’s judging with Tayla, who copped last place for her guest suite’s mystery pot plants and air fryer book. “It was a bit hard to swallow,” Rick admits, before the pair pivot to the week ahead: kitchen, butler’s pantry, powder room and lift, all on a $20,000 budget that both of them agree is nowhere near the $50,000 they’d love to spend. It’s a big ask for a small purse, and Scott Cam isn’t shy about reminding everyone that one house is about to make the other four look underfunded by comparison.
That house is Courtney and Sev, whose week two win finally pays off with a $250,000 e&s appliance package, commercial-grade ovens, a wine fridge stack and all, landing them first in line for tomorrow’s Kinsman kitchen install. Getting there is another matter entirely: a promised Gyprock delivery fails to show up for every team except Chantel and Wyatt, and with cabinets craning in at first light, Courtney ends up on the phone chasing a supplier who insists the plaster is “absolutely coming Monday,” right up until it doesn’t. Nine in Six sends their own rep out to Springvale for the truck and Langwarrin for the plaster, sorting it out themselves rather than leaving Courtney and Sev to fix it, generous, though it says something that nobody else was going to.
Downtown in House Five, the real drama is financial. Tayla discovers their plasterer has been charging $15,000 per room, more than double what Courtney and Sev paid for the same job, and when a rival crew from next door offers to finish the kitchen for $6,500, the original plasterer suddenly matches the price on the spot. “What kind of a cock head,” Rick asks, before firing him outright. Meanwhile Rosco, still owed a $5,335 tiling favour from Courtney and Sev’s week two win, tries to extract a $500 late fee and walks away with twenty bucks, a negotiating performance his own team rates as “absolutely terrible.”
The day’s warmest moment belongs to foreman Dan, back on site for the first time since his son Fletcher arrived a week early, trading gifts and cuddles with Scott Cam before handing the reins back to fill-in foreperson Leoni. Less warm: dinner at the share house, where Chantel and Wyatt clear their own plates and head straight for the gym, again, leaving everyone else to do the dishes. “They think it’s a bloody restaurant,” is the general verdict, right before Courtney and Sev jet off to the Portsea Hotel for a Chery Getaway dinner with Scott, an Arnott’s Big Bickies bonus worth $20,000, and Courtney’s first ever oyster.
Kitchens are up, tempers are simmering, and somewhere in the preview reel for the week ahead someone appears to have painted an entire room without permission. Back tomorrow for whatever that turns out to be.
