There has been talk of Kerrie and Spence dramatically storming off The Block all week and in episode 19 it was revealed exactly what pushed them over the edge.
A sound engineer was employed to give the Block a special rating and in order to obtain that rating all teams must follow the specifications and system outlined by them.
But Spence’s plasterer Ricki fails to send through a data sheet and Dan demands Spence swaps out the 170 mounts in his ceiling grid work.
“I don’t like doing things twice,” seethes Spence who later says he refuses to redo the work.
“What is the point?” laments Kerrie to the cameras.
And in fellow Blockhead villain Sara style, the couple later remove their microphones and storm off the Block, on the way-out Spence tells Norm if you don’t see us don’t be surprised.
“We were deciding if this was really for us, because there was nothing wrong with the clips,” Kerrie, 48, explains. “We were both so sleep-deprived – especially Spence. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Spence, 46, agrees that it wasn’t just about being told to replace 170 ceiling clips. The pressure had been building for a long time.
“Kerrie gets to go out and shop and I’m stuck in the apartment all day. It’s a dark room and you’re breathing in all the crap that’s flying around in the air and you’ve got everyone coming up to you every two seconds.”
“With all the stresses going on, I just needed to get out.”
Being a prestige builder, Spence has put himself under a lot of pressure to deliver high-quality rooms. But with all the constraints of The Block, he’s struggled to do that.
“It wasn’t nice to see him upset,” Kerrie says. “Because he’s such a perfectionist, it just went against everything, all his work methods.”
During filming, the couple missed a lot of things about their life in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, including their independence.