Echo most of what has been said here so far. Andy and Lisa were shockingly underscored last week - getting 6s for two near perfect rooms and one well executed but supposedly poorly designed rooms when Pete and Courtney got 7s for unfinished and poorly painted rooms was some of the worst judging this series has seen.
Do agree Pete and Courtney are being given the villian edit but there isn’t really an out and out villianous team this year, and most of what Pete has said this week has been spot on. Did himself no favours though with the tent debacle and producers should never have rolled over for them as the precedent is now set.
As for this years changes - the early reveal does make better TV than the bonus room/statement pieces, though the bonus points do increase the likelihood of the same team having it week in week out. Notice they’ve not really made much fuss about the $5000 extra for the next renovation when covering the renovation (i.e. splashing out on a special piece, getting tradies in to do more work etc.) - but then again they don’t seem to show much of the reno now anyway. They showed more of Lisa and that bloody snake than anything else last week - was recapped three shows on the run this week despite it having no baring on the outcome at all. (Bet those baby birds died too - a nest of young chicks should never be moved!)
Hate that the judging is so dragged out once again, and the split zones make is so disjointed. Jamie Durie is alright but I miss Drew’s obvious hatred of Lawrence.
One noticeable thing this year though is the renos have been simplified - I think for the first three they were pretty much repaint jobs with no walls moved, which at least means an end to the weekly tiresome fight for space. Indeed they made a point of saying this week was the first time walls had been knocked down, where as in previous series they pretty much knocked every wall down and started from scratch.
I like the simplified renovations for the first three houses too, but the producers should have gone further and end the split zones. For example, at Mikaela and Eliza’s family home in WA, the master bedroom, ensuite and dressing zoom are joined. They should have been allocated to Tim and Mat only, rather than having Pete and Courtney doing the ensuite and the chippies renovating the other two rooms.
They were like lemmings following the team that had done well so far. Why they all chose black as the theme for their rooms made no sense, apart from being copy cats. The low scores were deserved. They did not follow the rules and now the home owners are left with a dud house.
I do agree with the judges that all five teams overused black in their decor. There are darker colours that can represent industrial sleek.
The only successes are Isabella’s bedroom, the bathroom and the dining room.
At least Lawrence was consistently harsh today, and actually agreed with the general view that the House Rules had just been completely ignored with virtually no blue and green and very little timber throughout. Clearly many of the contestants, especially Alex and Katie, got to the point where they’re so confident/cocky in their design they think they’re better than the rules. Must admit although I like Alex and Katie it’s quite satisfying seeing them drop to the bottom - makes it more interesting.
This weeks probably fairer scoring of Lisa and Andy just highlights how unfair last weeks was. And credit to Pete and Courtney though I didn’t particularly like either room they stepped it up this week.
Talking of which though looks like Shane and Carly will top the table this week but I think their reno is next. Presumably the choice of who does the Early Room Reveal therefore rolls down to 2nd place, which looks like being Pete and Courtney (there is clear water between them and 3rd). After the tent debacle hope that is somehow stripped from them and handed back to Shane and Carly for the final reno.
Finally a couple of production thoughts. From an editing point of view felt like we saw more of the renovation/design process in the first half of todays show than we’d seen all week - and even then they managed to cram in multiple scenes of Lisa pulling strange faces.
And lastly back to the zones and thought it was ridiculous how the Entry was split into Entry and Mud Room when the “mud room” was basically the cabinet and the screen. The light in the entry hanged over what was supposedly both zones, and really the Bathroom and Dining Room was enough to be classed as one zone.
The current season of House Rules will have 1-2 less episodes to show each week from mid June, due to the debut of The Super Switch on Tuesday, June 12. By then, the competition should move into garden and backyard makeover stage.
This is the first time in House Rules history that two teams tied for first place at the end of an interior renovation round. Pete and Courtney deserved the 10 from Tim and Mat for the brilliant makeover of Isabella’s bedroom and the kitchen. Although Shayn and Carly also finished equal first, they were not able to receive the Allianz Advantage as their home would be renovated next.
The renovation of Shayn and Carly’s home at Aroona, a suburb of Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast, took place in early February, according to local paper Sunshine Coast Daily whose reporters took a couple of photos including this one.
There were quite a lot of disagreements among the judges in tonight’s episodes. LLB said Tim and Mat’s hallway was overachieved but Jamie and Wendy liked it. Jamie and Wendy also loved Imogen’s bedroom but LLB despised it.
I also didn’t like the way Shayn and Carly chose the winning room based on strategy, in early room reveal. If the couple wanted a particular team to lose, they should have done it discreetly. It would be to see how the other four teams reacted when they caught up with Shayn and Carly at the next renovation (I don’t think the producers would allow the teams to discuss the renos backstage at the home base).
Team scores at the end of renovation of Shayn and Carly’s house:
Katie and Alex: 173
Tim and Mat: 147
Shayn and Carly: 144
Pete and Courtney: 138
Lisa and Andy: 127
Mikaela and Eliza: 122
Katie and Alex’s house will be renovated next, meaning the couple is likely to lose top spot, unless Tim and Mat, Shayn and Carly and Pete and Courtney all score poorly from the judges. Mikaela and Eliza is at risk of elimination and will need a very high score (and six points more than Lisa and Andy) to stay in the competition.
Last season’s winning couple Toad Heffernan and Mandy Stone caught up with Katie and Alex and their daughter Hallie last weekend.
The first two shows of each renovation are such a frustrating and almost pointless watch with virtually zero attention on the renovation. That bloody shire horse got more airtime than any of the design concepts.
Even the focus on the early room reveal is barely about the design or the process - they’ve tried to make it all about strategy this week when really it wasn’t at all. Tim & Matt were always going to choose the girls - they’ve been close through out, and also it was the fairest choice as it meant every team had done two early rooms each. The idea Pete & Courtney would get it was ludicrous - even if that “storyline” was genuinely driven by their behaviour there was no way they were getting another chance at one, and considering they had 4 spaces to do it seemed unlikely they’d really want it either.
I would guess we’ll lose the girls this week though considering how poorly the judges have scored Lisa and Andy throughout (rather unfairly at times) I wouldn’t take it for granted. Hopefully they return to the format of the earlier series for the later rounds of Front and Back Gardens, rather than the Backyard Battles of last year, and I wouldn’t mind seeing the “24-hour fix up” challenge return at some point too, though in all honesty compared to early series there aren’t too many disasters that need fixing up.
Just caught up with Monday’s episode in which Shayn and Carly saw their newly renovated home for the first time. Tim and Mat deserved the 10 for their hallway. Mikaela and Eliza lost a couple of points because of an unfinished dishwasher and a poor designed microwave frame in the kitchen.
However, I think the episode was poorly edited. Katie and Alex’s zone was shown first, followed by Tim and Mat’s zone. As Katie and Alex did the laundry, which is accessed through turning the bookshelf on the hallway, the surprise element of the hallway (concealing doors behind wooden panels) was lost.
On to Katie and Alex’s house at Gundaroo, 40 minute drive north east from Canberra. Having the bathroom situated between two old fireplaces shows the failure of the house planner. Why would you place a wet zone next to a fireplace? It should have been allocated to a master bedroom or a guest bedroom. Also, it’s dangerous to have kids corner (first for this season) right next to the kitchen. It should have swapped position with the lounge.
I agree. Also, every display home I have seen in Sydney and Canberra over the past fifteen or so years has an external door to the laundry. But for some reason that escapes me, a lot of the houses on House Rules do not have an external door for the laundry, and even some that did have a door it had been filled in during the renovation. Also, I have never seen a ‘boot room’ in any display home.
Maybe the lack of external door to the laundry is for security reasons? Also many houses which feature on the show have dryers installed, so there is little need for a clothes line at the backyard.
Tim and Mat won the final early house reveal with Hallie’s room (Hallie is Katie and Alex’s one-year-old daughter) which will boost the boys’ chances of claiming the top spot. Conversely, losing the challenge was a huge blow for Mikaela and Eliza, because the bonus points would have meant the sisters would be one point behind Lisa and Andy.
According to the promo, the three judges will personally deliver the critiques and scores to the teams on Sunday’s reveal episode.
It’s quite standard in Australia for a laundry to have an external door. Quite odd that they’re doing so many European style laundries but I guess they only care about making a show rather than making it practical.
Agree regarding the editing of the reveal, and it makes it such an unrewarding experience for the viewer now. The split zones really don’t help, but even with that they still used to show the genuine initial reveal of the main living area as they walked into the house, and then show them judging the areas later when they also saw the seperate rooms.
Not even sure the European Laundries are that common in Europe. Indeed this week us here in the UK have been having a bit of a debate with Germany over the best location of the washing machine, with the bathroom being the norm in Germany and the kitchen in the UK (though bigger UK homes will have a “utility room” which is essentially a laundry.
So phase one over and two noticeable things about the scoring. Certainly the first round every homeowner has given another team a 10 - you have to wonder if they agreed to do that early on, or whether Pete and Courtney did what I’d have done and played tactically by judging highly in week one to encourage higher scores from the homeowners in the weeks ahead. If they did it works.
However on the flip side I think this is the first series where the judges haven’t awarded a single 10 to a team during the main renovation stage. And probably rightly so.
