When an online video of Sydney sisters Maddy and Charlotte showing they’d renovated houses before surfaces on The Block, the teams they’re competing against feel betrayed.
“They flat-out lied,” Haydn, 37, tells TV WEEK. “They told us they were accountants – they didn’t mention they’d flipped houses. They asked for advice on how to do things within a build, yet they obviously knew it all.”
It’s Guest Ensuite Week on The Block, and IT manager Haydn’s wife Chelsea and newborn daughter Matilda relocate to Phillip Island, 140 kilometres south-east of Melbourne, to be closer to him.
Now just around the corner, Chelsea develops a friendship with House 4’s Kylie, who recruits her new pal to get “dirt” on Maddy and Charlotte.
“Chelsea loves to get involved – that’s her character,” Haydn says with a laugh. “She found the video [of Maddy and Charlotte renovating] on Google in five minutes.”
Plumber Ricky, 34, who’s building with his best mate Haydn, thinks the unearthed video proves the siblings in House 1 have an unfair advantage.
“Me and H have never flipped a house together,” he says. “It takes weeks to get to know each other’s strengths when it comes to renovating.”
But Maddy and Charlotte insist they misled no-one and are “not liars”.
“Mimi [of House 5] had heard rumours from the builders that we had experience and asked us about it, and we were honest,” Maddy, 25, tells TV WEEK.
“We told her our story of renovating houses – we never lied. If the others had asked about our experience, we would have shared it, but they never did. It’s not on us to tell them the nitty-gritty.”
The siblings are also left feeling uneasy when they’re ambushed about the video Chelsea tracked down.
“Haydn came up to us and we asked if he’d had a late night,” Maddy recalls. “He said, ‘Actually, I’ve been watching you [at work in the renovating video] since 4am.’ That made me feel so uncomfortable.”
Things don’t get any better for House 1 when Kylie catches Charlotte and their new carpenter Jack taking a sneaky walk-through of the others’ bathrooms to check their progress while everyone’s out for dinner.
When Kylie describes the move as “immature” and “suspicious”, it leaves the sisters feeling even more on the outer.
“They [the other contestants] have dinners without us and hang out in each other’s houses – we can hear them,” Charlotte recalls.
“It makes us really upset,” Maddy adds. “I don’t know how to exist in the same space as people who clearly don’t want us there.”
