The Block 2026 episode 9 recap: A huge prize causes bitterness in one contestant

Wyatt makes a generous if slightly reluctant agreement he will come to regret tonight, allowing his tilers — the legendary Cursio brothers — to go and work on Courtney and Sev’s site when they finish Wyatt and Chantel’s job.

And after struggling all week to finish after a wet screed issue derailed them they scrape to the finishing line in what Courtney rightly calls “the greatest comeback in Block history” to win in a week where the prize includes a $250,000 package of highend kitchen and laundry appliances.

True, they spent a whopping $53,272 to achieve it in week where they had $20,000 to spend, but it’s a gamble that paid off, possibly helped by the fact they were competing against two teams who didn’t get anywhere near finishing.

Both dud Block homes sold, blow to last year’s stars

Fresh blow for 2025 Block stars as new season starts

With some controversial help from the Cursio brothers, Courtney and Sev’s family bathroom was a winner.

Lisa and Rosco presented an empty untiled room after their tiler’s work was deemed sloppy and not up to code by the site foremen and had to be ripped up.

Courtney and Wyatt had agreed they could use the Cursio brothers once they were finished at their house, but when the super tilers turn up Lisa and Rosco are so far behind there’s little point in getting them to work.

“You may as well go where you’re actually going to be useful,” Lisa tells them and so the Cursios fatefully end up at Courtney and Sev’s place.

“I’m very nervous,” Wyatt admits. And he was right to be. Without the Cursio’s it’s likely Courtney and Sev wouldn’t have finished either.

Courtney and Sev’s winning powder room.

They were also helped out by an unlikely party.

With Lisa and Rosco at a standstill Dan suggests Rosco go over and offer Courtney and Sev some manpower in return for something that might help them in a later week.

Rosco is nervous given he reneged on the deal he made with the girls last week, but heads over anyway, describing his hard-bitten negotiating technique thus: “I basically went over and said ‘Hey we’ll help you out and if you win you can give us something’,” he says. “I’m weak as piss.”

Luckily Dan is there to ensure the terms and conditions are locked in with the final agreement being Rosco will help out and if the girls win they’ll pay for Lisa and Rosco’s bathroom to be tiled.

The judges loved Adam and Jolene’s onsen-style shower seat.

But when Jolene finds out she’s furious, marching off to tell Lisa and Rosco that Courtney has been describing Rosco as a “dog” and lecturing them on doing deals with him.

“Why! The f**king girls sat there the other night and talked smack about them!” she says.

Jolene and Adam, along with Chantel and Wyatt, are the only other teams to finish their bathroom this week and they have high hopes of a win, especially given they’ve spent $37,816.

But those hopes are dashed when the judges rule them out of contention for their fatal decision to eschew a door to the toilet, rendering the powder room pointless.

“The only people it’s going to work for is the people that go to the nudist beach down the road,” Shaynna Blaze says.

The judges like the onsen style seat clad in beige kit kat tiles but they question the need for a huge and expensive floor to ceiling shower screen that runs across the entire room given the wet area isn’t a steam room and also note the complete lack of lighting and the poor painting.

Adam and Jolene’s main bathroom.

Marty Fox counters though that most of these issues are easy to fix and wouldn’t deter a buyer anyway.

“It’s just little things and I don’t think the everyman buyer will notice these little things,” he says, before Shaynna points out that they’re currently being noticed in a reasonably public forum.

Wyatt and Chantel win the $10,000 budgeting award, having spent $29,565 in a week where they lost an entire day due to having a massive sulk.

They haven’t changed the architect’s design featuring three doors into one small vestibule, a fact the judges criticise them for, which seems a little unfair.

They’re also criticised for having a tiny basin in a fairly large powder room and for not building their shaving cabinets into the wall, meaning the first thing you see walking into the bathroom is the side of the cabinets.

Chantel and Wyatt’s family bathroom with bath jammed up against the wall and the sides of the cabinets exposed.

The judges like the wall sconces, the tapware colour choices and the vanity, but Marty notes the decision to jam the bath right into the corner of the room is “amateur hour” give it means anyone having a bath won’t be able to lean their head back.

“This is where minimalism can go completely wrong,” Shaynna says. “Where you go from stark and simple to being prison-like.”

If that’s Shaynna’s idea of a prison bathroom, then lock me up.

When the judges walk into Lisa and Rosco’s $36,342 unfinished room they note that the couple have come up with the best layout of the day so far. They also love the brushed titanium tapware and vanity. Shaynna also notes the fact they haven’t tiled means they may have dodged a bullet because they can now ditch the boring floor tiles they had laid out for the judges’ inspection for something with texture.

Lisa and Rosco don’t have much to show for their week.

Rick and Tayla’s room is also unfinished but the judges are so unimpressed with what they have delivered it probably didn’t make any difference to their placing.

There’s no face level storage, their floor to ceiling tiles don’t actually meet the ceiling, their towels are too busy and they’re committed what is apparently a cardinal styling sin of having a bathmat on display. How gauche.

So it’s Courtney and Sev’s week, again.

Rick and Tayla in their unfinished bathroom.

They’ve redone the architect’s layout to create a sliding door from the hallway into the powder room, an open vestibule area for a linen closet and a classy space with a marble shelf and curved rendered wall in the powder room, inset face level cabinets in the main bathroom, with a huge rectangular skylight in the perfect position.

There’s a lack of power points near the vanity but that’s about the only criticism the judges can come up with and they take home the most important win of the season.

Jolene is spitting chips, whining on the phone in the car home that the girls got extra help.

Jolene complaining about Courtney and Sev’s win.

“The girls are a joke. They’re going ‘we’re struggling, we’re so behind’, next minute there’s 100 other trades in their and everyone else does their work for them.”

Maybe she should have been whinging about her bizarre decision to create a literal public toilet in a lux bathroom.

FINAL SCORES

Adam and Jolene 24.5

Chantel and Wyatt 21.5

Lisa and Rosco 15.5

Courtney and Sev 25.5

Rick and Tayla 18.5

MISSED AN EPISODE? HERE’S ALL OUR RECAPS SO FAR

Episode 1: First tears shed on season 22 of The Block

Episode 2: ‘I will shut you down’

Episode 3: ‘I won’t help them again’

Episode 4: ‘You will only last five weeks’