The Block fuels the trend of failed DIY home renovations – realestate.com.au

The Block is leaving a trail of financial grief across Australia as homeowners try to emulate the show’s glitzy renovations – and fail spectacularly, industry insiders claim.

Tradies companies told The Daily Telegraph that the show inspired new DIY renovations every year, but there has also been a more recent explosion in the popularity of reality TV-inspired renovations.

This was due to the advent of AI resources such as ChatGPT and others, which DIY renovators often turned to for a step-by-step guide on how to carry out work themselves.

The problem was that many of these renovators used what they saw on TV as a guideline for how quickly jobs could be completed, which wasn’t always realistic.

Renovators then began working with inaccurate budgets, lofty ideas about how long it would take, and a misunderstanding about which jobs were truly within their scope without training.

The result was the eventual call from expensive professional tradies to clean up botched renovations.

MORE: Why many people are hesitant to buy The Block homes

Plumber Alex Taskun of Sydney-based GT Plumbing said homeowners often tried to emulate what they saw on the show with DIY projects. Photo: Sam Ruttyn

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Trade companies told The Daily Telegraph that the problem was twofold: the show helped create unrealistic expectations about reno timelines and often encouraged misguided design choices.

Part of the reason for that misconception was that the series would not always fully reflect how long tradies worked on site to actually complete the tasks shown on screen.

Some tradies who worked on the show were reportedly large teams working long hours of 10 to 15 hours a day, which few homeowners could afford on a true renovation project.

Show critics have also argued that The Block’s designs were deliberately dramatic, built to capture the attention of TV audiences rather than appeal to the wider property purchasing market.

Those who emulate the exaggerated features, quirky layouts and high-end finishes could end up with beautiful but financially risky renovations, renovation experts said.

Alex Taskun, the president of GT Plumbing, said every year the show and other reality reno images inspired do-it-yourself renovations, but they often ended in disaster.

He said he was often called in to fix the work, with most of the work involving a botched bathroom renovation.

“People are fascinated by all the glamor and special effects that TV offers and think they can get all these things done quite easily,” Taskun said.

Mr Taskun said reality reno shows often gave people a false sense of what they could do themselves and in what time frame, leading to expensive home damage. Photo: Tim Hunter.

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“They have some timelines (on The Block). People think they can actually create this. It seems so simple. It’s definitely not. There’s a reason why our transactions take so long and our compliance, our governance and our training are so important.”

Mr Taskun said he was recently called to repair a bathroom where the homeowners had connected toilet wastewater to a shower pipe – without realizing this would damage a vital water barrier.

“Showers have a trap to catch hair and follicles and a water barrier to stop the smell of the sewer. If you discharge feces in there, you will smell poop 24/7,” he said.

In other incidents, homeowners attempted to waterproof themselves.

“They spend so much time realizing they didn’t do the waterproofing right and the whole bathroom has to come out,” Taskun said.

Renovator Cherie Barber, herself a star of reality renovation TV shows, said the shows were for entertainment and not education. Photo: Tim Hunter.

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Sunshine Coast carpenter Sil Lazzara said he has been offered several jobs on Airtasker to repair works that he could tell were clearly inspired by The Block and other renovation shows.

“Wallpaper is popular in all those shows. That could be a sign,” he said, adding that most people understood that a reality show was for entertainment rather than accuracy.

Still, there were those with a distorted view of renovation timelines, he explained.

“A lot of people take inspiration from those shows and try to put a spin on them,” he said.

“You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, but the one thing I would say with The Block that’s unrealistic is the time frame in which they’re doing it.

“Realistically, I don’t understand how they can turn things around so quickly. They get projects every week and I don’t know how you can make a bathroom in seven days. Bathrooms usually take four to six weeks.”

Renovating for profit Cherie Barber, a professional renovator and regular guest on reality shows, said the things depicted on TV usually “get good ratings, but that’s not how a renovation project should be.”