Halfway through Kitchen Week and the temperature’s up everywhere, in the bedrooms, on the site, and now in the prize pool. Scott Cam turns up with a gold bar in his pocket and somehow that’s not even the strangest thing that happens today.
Key Moments Today
- DRAMAChantel and Wyatt’s kitchen handles arrive in the wrong metal entirely, copper instead of the champagne gold used everywhere else in the house, caught by stylist Shelley on a judges’ walkthrough with barely a day left to fix it: “This week’s a loss before we even started.”
- ARGUMENTCourtney and Sev wake up drenched after the bedroom hits sauna levels overnight, and accuse next-door neighbour Tayla of turning the shared heater up as sabotage. She eventually confesses: “I was the criminal who did that.”
- RIDICULOUS PURCHASEAdam’s relentless snooping earns him an “Adam Free Zone” warning song and giant mugshot posters around the site, before Tayla retaliates by climbing the scaffold to sneak into Adam and Jolene’s house herself while they’re out: “Rats do come out at night.”
- DISASTERThe Block’s own painter is spotted actually rolling a wall in Courtney and Sev’s kitchen, not just demonstrating technique, and the rest of the street calls it out on the spot: “That’s not allowed on The Block. That is cheating.”
The stakes get a jolt early when Scott Cam and Shelley Craft arrive with more than the usual $10,000 weekly prize. This week it’s $100,000: $30,000 in gold bullion from Kinsman for whoever’s house sells at auction, $60,000 worth of Cosentino Dekton stone to spend anywhere else in the house, and the cash on top. It lands hardest on Courtney and Sev, who are still trying to justify their $250,000 e&s appliance package after “the pressure’s really getting into Sev’s head,” in Courtney’s words, and it isn’t helped by a very bad night’s sleep.
That bad sleep has a name: Tayla. Courtney and Sev wake up convinced their room was deliberately cooked overnight, and corner Tayla at breakfast demanding answers. She denies it flat out, more than once, before quietly admitting she’d cranked the shared heater up to 32 degrees because she was cold. It’s the second heater-related diplomatic incident of the week for House Five, whose splashback paperwork saga from earlier in the week has at least resolved itself, with Tayla’s lit-up ECLOS quartz splashback finally installed and looking, by her own admission, spectacular.
Adam, meanwhile, has become a site-wide meme. His habit of wandering into other houses “for a look” has escalated to the point where Chantel and Jolene write him an actual warning song, “Adam Free Zone,” and papering the walls with his face like a wanted poster. He takes it as a compliment and keeps doing it anyway. It’s Tayla who turns the tables properly, though, sneaking up the scaffold into Adam and Jolene’s house the moment they leave for the evening, prompting Jolene to declare war: “She needs to stay away from my house.”
Kinsman’s cabinetry rollout across all five houses this week has been the smoothest logistics win of the season, right up until Chantel and Wyatt discover their handles came through in the wrong finish, a mismatch that would have sunk their score outright if Shelley hadn’t caught it on a walkthrough. A last-minute supplier favour gets replacements arriving just before midday tomorrow. Less easily fixed: The Block’s own painter Tim, sent round to demonstrate technique, gets caught with a loaded roller mid-stroke on Courtney and Sev’s wall by Adam’s dad, who happened to be filming the sunset at the time. Accusations of cheating fly before anyone’s even confirmed how much wall he actually covered.
Between the chaos there’s a genuine bright spot: Sev gets her own product into production, a custom pendant light designed with Beacon Lighting that’ll sell online with her name on it, and the site’s weekly Sizzle ‘n Score challenge, sponsored by Bunnings, goes to Rick for House Five, who remains, to everyone else’s visible despair, completely unbeaten.
Kitchens are nearly there, the handles are being fixed, and somewhere in a warehouse a $100,000 prize is waiting on a decision. Back Sunday for the reveal.
