The scores were tied heading into this week’s bathroom challenge, and the whole flat sat down for a viewing session hoping for less of a performance than last week.
Unfortunately, watching the teams try to put a room together is a bit like watching a T-Rex trying to change sheets on a bed.
Both teams had three wet areas to complete in the 32 hours allotted.
Black Team’s builder Zach turned up late on the first day, leading Simon to wonder whether his morning coffee group. Speculation is high that the producers have decided that Zach is “a bit of all right”, which is why we see so much of him on the show.
Zach described Jay and Amanda as very “hands on”, but wasn’t convinced about their abilities to actually get anything done. Willingness to learn is definitely there, but hampered by the lack of any actual talent in the building area.
The Orange Team’s plumber very firmly told Sarah “no” from the outset when she wanted to have a wall hung toilet – as Simon so eloquently put it, she lost the Game of Thrones.
The DIY Challenge kicked off with tears again this week before it had even begun, this time, from both sides of the fence – Sarah from the Orange Team and Amanda from the Black Team both struggling to hold it together under pressure.
Marty and Jay were given the instruction set to assemble a flat-pack ladder contraption, and had to relay directions to their partner with their backs turned. Marty’s first instruction to Sarah to “open the box” was right on the money, but they hit a glitch when she didn’t know what he was talking about when he asked her to find the screws.
Communication breakdown was the name of the game for the Black Team – Amanda wanted to tell Jay to shut up so she could just get on with it, which was unfortunate considering Jay was being quite helpful with her instructions.
The Orange Team took out the challenge for the third week in a row, and Jay apologised to Amanda saying she did her best to explain it. Amanda was about as receptive to this as she was to any instructions throughout the challenge, and told her “I just wish you’d shut the f*** up and let me do it”.
Tears all round at this.
Zach was unsympathetic at the girls’ return to the house, and said he couldn’t be bothered with the waterworks and had no time for it. Not alone there, Zach.
An hour later and Amanda is putting her makeup back on to head back into the building zone. She claims to have sealed her tear ducts up, but we aren’t holding our breath on that one.
Zach explained aqualine GIB to Simon, and how it is good for steamy areas like bathrooms because of its extra water resistance.
Simon’s next comment that he should get some installed for the bedroom at home was almost too much for us.
Overnight, the Orange Team put their wallpaper up in the bathroom and painted it black which produced a textured effect over the pattern. They painted too soon though, and the wallpaper started to come off in some places.
Another drama hit for Marty and Sarah in the form of a showerhead at a height suitable for Smurfs. When Marty got it, it was clearly too low, but there’s no show without punch, so Simon gets in after him to really emphasise the problem in case anyone was unclear.
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The waterworks continued following this and the poor plumber had to take himself outside to get away from Sarah. In some of the wisest words of the night, he said, “if she doesn’t stop crying soon we are going to have to send her up to Auckland to break the drought”.
Over at the Black Team, it took half an hour to put a couple of handles on doors, and whoever installed the lights in the bathrooms had clearly gone rogue. An emergency redesign was needed when there was a light where a mirror should have been, and another mirror was too big to be put between lights that had been installed in another room.
With just eight minutes to go, the Black Team was putting the doors on their bathrooms. The handle had also been put on the wrong way, which was Jay’s pet project and picked up on by the judges, who said that while the bath was a bit of luxury, it was disappointing the Black Team’s shower was still in pieces, and there was no mirror.
Amanda chipped in that they didn’t like looking in the mirror, which is why there wasn’t one there.
The tiles were so dirty the judges couldn’t see the detail, and the Black Team had more than a few finishing problems with rough edges and incomplete components of their room.
Judging over at the Orange house went a bit better – a lot of niggly little details like shower doors not closing and the low hanging shower head were picked up, but overall the design was described as sharp, clean, and sexy.
The upstairs shower was criticised for not looking like it was meant to be a wet room, but the judges did like the painted black wallpaper in the other bathroom.
In a much bigger score gap than last week’s one-point difference, the Orange Team took out the bathroom challenge 23-16.
With the DIY challenge and energy efficient award this week, it was a clean sweep for Marty and Sarah. Next week is kids’ bedrooms which could prove interesting considering the size of the Orange Team’s tribe, from my calculations they will be building at least five rooms compared to Black Team’s three.
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