Kitchen week ends the only way a $100,000 week ever could: with a body corp meltdown, a wasted joker, a pantry raid, and one house that simply didn’t finish. Scott Cam warned everyone it would be a $500,000 kitchen for someone. Nobody quite got there, but a few came close enough to make Marty Fox rewrite his own record book.
| Rank | Team | Score | Judges’ Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 1st | Adam and Jolene | 30 | “It’s probably one of the best kitchens I’ve ever seen. I’ve been in the game for nearly 20 years.” |
| 🥈 2nd | Lisa and Rosco | 28.5 | “I truly believe buyers are gonna fight for this one.” |
| 🥉 3rd | Courtney and Sev | 27.5 | “You’ll have a chef-type buyer that comes in here and says, I will only buy House 4.” |
| 4th | Rick and Tayla | 25.5 | “If they just had a bit more time to paint, this could be my winner.” |
| 5th (wooden spoon) | Chantel and Wyatt | 23 | “It does the job, but it’s cold.” |
Key Moments This Episode
- DISASTERChantel and Wyatt walk into judging with an unfinished powder room after declining extra hours the night before, and it shows.
- ARGUMENTThe Saturday-night body corp call turns ugly when Rick’s dad plays the disability card over his knee: “That’s-that’s not a fair card.”
- DRAMAThe Tim-the-painter feud resurfaces mid-crisis, with Rick’s side accusing Courtney and Sev of scoring their own unofficial paint job weeks earlier.
- RIDICULOUS PURCHASEDown to the wire on groceries, Tayla raids the share house pantry at dawn instead of doing a proper shop, unrepentant when caught on camera.
- DRAMAAdam and Jolene play their joker gnome for extra insurance, then win outright by 1.5 points anyway, sending the gnome straight back into circulation.
- ARGUMENTThe body corp vote comes back unanimous “no” on extra time, and Rick fumes through gritted teeth while painting solo on a bung knee.
- DISASTERRick and Tayla’s unfinished butler’s pantry paint costs them a real shot at kitchen of the day, Marty saying flatly it would have been “a genuine contender.”
House 1: Adam and Jolene, 1st, 30 points
Winning kitchen week by 1.5 points is one thing. Getting there after last-minute flipping the island so the view wins instead of the wall is another. Adam and Jolene turned their bench around late, added a mirror that doubles the sightline out to the Dandenongs, and finished a lift shaft wallpapered floor to ceiling with Grafico gum trees, a detail the judges didn’t even clock until their third trip in the elevator.
Marty Fox called it one of the best kitchens he’s seen in nearly 20 years judging the show. Darren singled out a five-in-one combi oven as his single favourite appliance of the season, and Shaynna wanted to move in on the spot over the island alone. It all added up to a “Mount Eliza luxe” verdict from Scott Cam, delivered with a straight face despite months of taking the mickey out of that exact phrase.
They also played their joker gnome for insurance, entirely unnecessarily as it turned out, since they’d have won by 1.5 points regardless. The gnome heads back out into the wild for someone else to gamble with next week. The win itself comes with $10,000 from Chery, $30,000 in Kinsman gold bullion, $60,000 of Cosentino Dekton, a bonus $10,000 from Arnott’s tied to the gnome play, and a stay on a $1.2 million boat in the bay, a whopping $110,000 night in total.
House 3: Lisa and Rosco, 2nd, 28.5 points
Lisa and Rosco also picked up this week’s CommBank Better Budgeting Award and its $10,000 cash, on top of a near-perfect scorecard. The dark walnut kitchen was a deliberate risk, paired with Cosentino’s new Eclos Wondr stone, which Shaynna called epic, and a curved fridge detail Darren rated as his favourite feature of the day.
It was the powder room that cost them a shot at the top score. A squished layout and a green tile Marty flatly didn’t love pulled Shaynna back from what she admitted, almost in tears, was on track to be the season’s first 10. Even so, Marty’s read on the room was blunt: buyers are going to fight over this one.
House 4: Courtney and Sev, 3rd, 27.5 points
Courtney and Sev’s week two prize finally landed in full this week, a $256,000 e&s appliance package that Darren called an outright impressive kitchen, no qualifiers needed. The emotional high point was a custom pendant light designed with Beacon Lighting, going into production under the name Sevilay, Sev’s full first name, which had her in tears on the spot.
Shaynna wasn’t sold on everything, questioning why the butler’s pantry needed doors at all when they didn’t line up with the cabinetry, and joking a smart toilet in the powder room was really “for dumb bums.” None of it dented Marty’s read on the room’s saleability: he reckons a chef-type buyer walks in and refuses to look at any other house on the street.
House 5: Rick and Tayla, 4th, 25.5 points
Rick and Tayla delivered the backlit feature of the week, a glowing Cosentino Sensa Cristalo splashback that left Darren visibly gobsmacked they’d pulled it off. Marty called the room exceptional and, in a first for the pair, praised their restraint, while the judges finally gave Tayla credit for styling after being pulled up on it nearly every week this season.
What kept them out of the top three was paint, or the lack of it. The unfinished butler’s pantry, fallout from the body corp vote going against them the night before, drew Marty’s most pointed line of the night: with just a coat of paint on it, this would have been his winner. A last-minute product mix-up in the powder room (bench spray and dishwashing liquid swapped on the vanity) at least gave the judges a laugh on the way through.
House 2: Chantel and Wyatt, 5th, 23 points, wooden spoon
A late supplier favour from Kosta saved Chantel and Wyatt’s cabinetry, swapping wrongly delivered copper handles for the correct champagne brass overnight. It wasn’t enough to save the rest of the week. Darren and Marty both landed on almost the same word for the finished kitchen: functional, but cold.
The powder room was worse. Shaynna called it a genuinely bad fail, an apricot splashback clashing against noticeably greyer tiles, and the room simply wasn’t finished by the time judging started, the direct result of being the only team to say no to extra time on Saturday night. By their own admission it was a bloody nightmare of a week where everything that could go wrong did.
Kitchen week is done, the gnome is back in play, and next week brings a two-room week: rumpus rooms and Kinsman laundries, with Scott Cam already teasing it might be the season’s first week of three 10s. Back next episode for the fallout.
