The Block 2018 hallway and laundry week reveal recap: Sara and Hayden come last again

It’s the boring but crucial week of The Block. No one wants to spend much time in a powder room, a hallway or a laundry, but that’s what our exhausted contestants were contractually obliged to spend the week doing.

Three rooms in a week is a whole lot of renovating, and not something we advise you to try at home, but the pay-off is again decent: a $10,000 budget boost for the winner, jealousy and resentment towards the winner for the runner-up.

Spence is so tired it looks as though he’s painted his face directly, rather than vicariously. But this is the facial expression and feeling to which Kerrie thinks a song, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, by Carole King, will sort him out.

They feel the pressure backing up their victory last week but the judges are in raptures as soon as they walk through the door.

“This feels so grand,” says Shaynna Blaze. “This is functionality. Love it.”

On entering the laundry, Darren Palmer asks a question for the ages “Is this what laundries have become? That they’ve this glamorous, almost kitchen-like finesse?” before Neale Whitaker chimes in: “That you hang out in?”

No, Neale. No one is hanging out in laundries. Even when there is comfortably room for all three of you.

The only clothes-washing room people hang out in is a dank laundromat in Europe because you’re trying to pick up the sexy backpacker in the corner getting the Reg Grundies cleaned.

Related: View the five Gatwick apartments for sale

• Kerrie and Spence: 1/34 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda
• Hans and Courtney: 2/34 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda
• Sara and Hayden: 3/34 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda
• Norm and Jess: 4/34 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda
• Bianca and Carla: 5/34 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda

The judges compliment Kerrie’s styling, saying it has moved up several levels, and Palmer going so far as to say it was near a professional’s. Daz. It’s a laundry. Surely most people can style a laundry. Chuck a few boxes of washing powder and a bucket of pegs next to it and Bob’s your uncle.

Over at Hans and Courtney’s, the enthusiasm for the quirky pieces and the sheer size of the hallways soon gives way for reservations about how everything ties together.

Palmer doesn’t approve of how separate each item is, rather than being cohesive. Whitaker is more accepting of the “boho luxe” museum-like feel of the space. Boho luxe museum?!

Less boho and more boring is their laundry. It’s functional, but is it Block-worthy, Palmer asks. It pales in comparison to Kerrie and Spence’s and is merely a “tick-the-box”, Blaze says.

Sara, in a way only Sara can, managed to sum up how she and Hayden were faring: “We’re f—ed”.

Indeed, and by a fair stretch. They’re not finished and Sara, in her haste to get a piece of art up, smashes a light globe just as it’s time to finish. Hayden, in a convenient lapse of thinking he lives in an alternative universe, says it’s not a bad effort for four days – the same amount of time everyone else had, and they managed to finish.

As the judges walk in, it’s they’ve found a needle in a strawberry when the full lights come on. The dirty floors leave the judges unimpressed. But being told there was no excuse for not having clean floors was too much for Sara.

“We did run out of time and it was mopped. But because we were running in and out of rooms, that’s what happened, eventually,” she says to feedback reader Scott Cam. He is not impressed.

Back to the judges and they like the lighting through the hallway and skirting boards. But that’s about it.

“Sara and Hayden are very frustrating,” says Whitaker. “They get some things so right but other things so wrong.” For him, the hallway is Jekyll/Hyde, Victor/Victoria. One is so, so right, the other is just very wrong. One has rich artwork, and the other that has a shelf with an assortment of items.

“It’s a disaster. To me, that looks like a garage sale. What relationship does that have with this side?”

Blaze agrees: “That’s up there with the worst styling I’ve seen on The Block.”

 Sara is unrepentant. “What else are you supposed to put on a sideboard?” Well, Sara, for one, it’s a shelf, not a sideboard, which usually has cupboards and doors.

Whitaker continues: “It’s the sort of styling that says ‘if we throw enough at it, there’ll be something they like and that’s why I said it looks like a garage sale … it’s kind of lazy.”

The laundry is much better, but the judges are still fuming about how unfinished the room is. Hayden had the flu, we’re told. “Throw us a bone,” Sara says. Good luck with that.

Finally upstairs to Jess and Norm’s, where things are actually finished. The judges praise the simplicity of the hallway and Whitaker is forced to acknowledge that an artist he previously bagged out is actually quite talented, after he praised a piece of hers Jess and Norm chose.

Also highly praised are the framed newspaper clippings of The Gatwick’s sale on the walls, but not so popular is the tight size of the laundry.

“A lot of buyers at this price point could be expecting something more generous,” says Whitaker.

But Jess has failed her “rich people” test. As Blaze points out, there is no luxury in pointing your toilet directly at the dining room.

Over at Bianca and Carla’s, it’s, well, sexy!

Whitaker raves about the hall runner, of all things, adding that it really adds to the feeling of a home. The dramatic lighting also wins plaudits, as does the continuation of their cabinetry theme.

“This is a stunning hallway,” Blaze says. “I actually love it.”

Though their laundry is the same size as Jess and Norm’s, the judges say it’s beautiful and has bountiful storage. And the ceilings that go on forever make them go gaga.

Back as the scores are handed down, Sara drops another F-bomb as she sees Blaze’s 5. It’s fair to say she hasn’t loved her Block experience.

Next week: guest bedrooms and redo rooms.

The scores

Kerrie and Spence: 29

Bianca and Carla: 27.5

Norm and Jess: 25

Courtney and Hans: 24

Hayden and Sara: 18