Block couple scramble to join Nine series

It was a baptism of fire for new Block contestants, Oyster Bay parents & renovators Rachel & Ryan who this week joined the series after the sudden exit by Joel & Elle.

They were given little notice to upend their lives in order to join the series, underway in Gisborne South.

Rachel recalled the call from Block producer Julian Cress.

“He said, ‘What are you doing on Monday? Do you want to come to The Block?’ I thought ‘What for?’ I’m a make-up artist. ‘Do you need me to do their make-up? That’s a bit rough.’

“He said, ‘No we’ve had people leave – we need you!’ Do you guys want to come?'”

That was at 3pm on Easter Saturday afternoon.

“So we just had to rearrange our whole lives and then get on the plane at 6:00 Monday morning,” said Ryan.

Rachel continued, “All I was thinking was, ‘Oh my god, I can’t get my hair done, it’s Easter. We don’t have any clothes and then Ryan said, ‘What about the kids?'”

Ryan’s parents quickly rearranged their holiday plans to return home while the couple also scrambled plans for their renovation business.

“Not only did we have to deal with leaving our kids behind, and shuffle two big design projects in our business,” said Ryan.

“We had to cancel that, refund all the money, sort out our lives across Easter Sunday. Then it was just basically jump down here dive straight into it.”

When they arrived at the Gisborne South site they were greeted by Scott Cam and building plans.

“We’ve never done anything like this before. Every camera crew that’s here was on us,” Rachel recalls.

“We had 15 minutes to go through our plans and then they said ‘You have a Beaumont consult in half an hour for the bathroom you’re doing this week!” said Ryan.

Rachel added, “We were on adrenaline for the first week, but because we were so underprepared, we go so overbudget!”

The Block screens Sunday – Wednesday on Nine.