After a week of health dramas and tears, Han and Can clinched victory for their brave and dramatic bathroom.
The West Australian couple would have tied for first place with Melburnians Ben and Em if not for their bonus point gnome.
“Holy f**k! Look at the bath!” judge Marty Fox exclaimed with the enthusiasm of a kid walking into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory as he caught site of the showstopping amber resin tub.
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Han and Can’s winning bathroom with showstopping resin bath and matching basins.
The opaque bath got both Marty and Darren Palmer thinking lustily about watching their better halves enjoying a soak, while Shaynna Blaze couldn’t resist hopping in to give it a try.
Swooning, Shaynna acknowledged: “This room is something that is very dangerous to try, if you don’t execute it properly.”
“It’s a punch in the face with a velvet glove,” Darren smiled, approvingly. But he felt the much-debated wall colour was “a little much” and urged them to tone them down.
Colour-bathing of a different sort also wowed them at House One where, the trio were impressed by the mulberry wallpaper and tiles chosen by Emma and Ben.
“It’s bold but not tacky! And it’s rich,” Marty marvelled of the craftmanship.
The only real criticism came from Shaynna, who felt the styling cheapened the otherwise lux aesthetic, singling out the crumpled bathrobes hanging behind the door.
“If you are going to hang a bathrobe, throw some money at the bathrobe,” she said.
The judges didn’t need to look too hard for things to criticise when they caught sight of Britt and Taz’s efforts.
Following the trend set by Mat and Robby, the couple went from first place to last in the space of a week thanks to their problem-plagued ensuite.
Britt and Taz’s room was roasted by Marty Fox.
Making the eleventh-hour decision to convert their arched entryway into a standard rectangular one – while retaining the custom arched door – caused all sorts of last minute hiccups and delays.
And the end result proved far from worth the effort as Marty said it just looked like a “square peg in a round hole”.
Once inside the walled off, four-person shower space, Marty complained that he felt like he was “sitting in an up-market abattoir.”
Hearing Marty’s feedback, Taz asked hopefully: “Is that good?”
It was not. And that became increasingly apparent to the fun-loving chunder-prone cop once Marty continued with his macabre assessment, noting that the shower room was well set up for washing blood down the drain.
“It’s cold and scary,” he continued. “It’s got a bad feeling in here. I don’t like it.”
The judges relax in the “up-market abattoir”.
After comparing Marty to the American Psycho protagonist Patrick Bateman for his creepy remarks, Darren pronounced that he loved the space. But not enough to get Britt and Taz off the bottom of the ladder with his scoring.
It was all up from there (sort of). The judges loved the styling, the tile choice and the colour palette of Alicia and Sonny’s grey and green bathroom but were left cold by the lay-out change which, they felt cramped all the facilities into the corners of the room and put the toilet on display.
And nobody loves an exhibitionist toilet (except perhaps, Sonny as we discovered earlier in the week).
The judges urged the couple to put the door back where it had been in the original plans. Easier said than done, given Sonny and Alicia had now ordered all their joinery for the adjoining room based on the new position of the bathroom door.
There were lots of features the judges liked in Sonny and Alicia’s bathroom, but the layout wasn’t one of them.
Nonetheless, Marty felt the space would appeal to buyers, enthusing: “This is a timeless bathroom that oozes luxury.”
It was cold comfort to Alicia and Sonny after a fraught 48 hours of fighting. Plus, Alicia had been reduced to tears by foreman Dan who she felt was needling her when she was feeling stressed and vulnerable.
His crime? To make some suggestions about how she could improve her paint-roller technique.
“They just come in and make you feel like shit and tell you that you suck,” she sobbed of Dan stirring up trouble. “Who would do that to people? I don’t go around making other people feel like shit. I’m just trying to learn.”
Hairdressers Robby and Mat are also learning on the job. The duo has had no renovation experience before The Block.
Robby and Mat won high praise for their bathroom.
And yet, despite last week’s disastrous “nursing home chic” kids’ room, they have one win under their belt and a potentially game-changing wine cellar underway.
“Cockle doodle do!” Marty grinned as he looked around their neutral-toned bathroom. “We have a couple of roosters in the hen house.”
Likening the space to a high-end hotel, Marty said the boys room didn’t have the punch of the others but it had sophistication.
“It’s open yet private,” he added. “It’s a real estate agent’s dream.”
Ben and Emma were unlucky not to take out the joint win for their curvy bathroom after Han and Can used their bonus point to cinch the outright prize.
Running his hands over the wallpaper, Darren cooed: “This is my love language here. I want to touch everything.”
Shaynna was less enthused, complaining that she didn’t feel the “bravery or the soul” in the boys’ room. She felt they had cut and paste their week one winning bathroom, declaring it “beige”.
It could be worse. At least it’s not being described as the perfect bathroom for Dexter.
FINAL SCORES
Han and Can: 29
Em and Ben: 28
Robby and Mat: 27 ¾
Alicia and Sonny: 26 ½
Britt and Taz: 21 ½
MISSED AN EPISODE? HERE’S ALL OUR RECAPS SO FAR
Episode 1: Why no NSW applicants were good enough for The Block
Episode 2: The worst day on The Block
Episode 3/4: ‘Tear them off’: teams forced to rip tiles from walls
Episode 5: Judges feedback leaves one contestant vomiting
Episode 6: Dan and Dani’s heartbreak
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