The Block's Steph hits out at surprising new rule this season: 'Hard'

They’re one of the most confident and experienced couples on this year’s season of The Block, but Steph and Gian have faced a number of setbacks during their first week.

After being heavily criticised by the judges for their kids’ room in the House Decider Challenge, the childhood sweethearts had difficulties working with their builders for Studio Bathroom Week.

Not only did their carpenter not understand how to read the floor plans, but the bathroom drain was installed incorrectly, there was an error with their floor height, and their main builder left the site early.

At one point foremen Keith and Dan pulled Steph aside to express their concerns, admitting that they’ve had a “disastrous” day dealing with their builders.

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During an appearance on Hit Breakfast with Maz & Matty on Thursday morning, Steph and Gian were asked about their team of builders and whether they actually chose them themselves.

“So the way that it works is in past seasons you can engage a builder that has been on previous episodes or series of The Block and they sort of get the game,” Steph explained.

“But this season they were like, ‘You can’t use anyone that has done The Block before’. So of course we found [the builders], but we’re from Sydney, we have no contacts, and we tried our best to find someone that’s suitable. But I was getting a lot of feedback from [the foremen] and it was hard.”

'Wait and see'

Steph added that the contestants were only given “a month or so” to choose their team of builders before filming began.

When asked whether contestants are able to fire the builders they’ve contracted if things aren’t working out and engage someone else, Gian encouraged the radio hosts to continue watching.

“I think you saw last year there were some contestants that probably didn’t make that tough judgment call,” he said.

“It’s definitely something that you are able to do. I think you’ll probably have to wait and see in the coming weeks what we do with that.”

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This comes shortly after host Scott Cam told Yahoo Lifestyle that season 19 will be very different to last year’s.

“It's a really good series,” he said. “We had a tough series last year, so it was nice to come back to something that was a bit fun and a bit more easygoing, I suppose.

“It's a bit more of a happy series, from my point of view anyway it has been. The contestants might not say the same, but from the crew’s point of view we enjoyed it,” he added with a laugh.

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