When Tash and Harry Pavlou first met their fellow contestants for home-renovation show The Block 2020, Tash was quick to say to them: “Let’s get one thing straight, he’s my dad.”

On Sunday, 23 August, the sixteenth series of The Block, kicked off on Channel 9 and it came with a whole new angle. It wasn’t just that COVID-19 played havoc with the production schedule, but for the first time the show featured a father/daughter combination, Harry and Tash from Melbourne.

And while some played on the fact that there would be plenty of Greek fire to enliven the reality show, the Pavlous, who are of Greek Cypriot descent, said working together on their allocated project was an opportunity to spend quality time despite the high demands of the show.

Tash, 32, a social media and production manager, had left the family home, and Harry saw their taking part in the show as an opportunity to reconnect with this first born. Tash’s younger brother is Jake.

“I had first raised the idea in 2017 but our schedules did not line up but this year everything fell into place and we were accepted on the first go,” Harry, 57, an IT manager, told Neos Kosmos.

“Dad Is not a builder but he is good with his hands and he has renovated a California bungalow and our home, so he focused on the building side and working with tradies, while I worked on the styling and design side,” Tash said.

Harry said his daughter had done a good job keeping an eye on their spending to ensure that they stayed within their allocated budget.

“There were some disagreements – it is hard to do something like this with someone you are close to,” Harry said. “But we are like-minded and open to listening to each other, so that there were not many times when we could not agree. There were no big blow ups, some tears, some flare ups but nothing out of control.”

Any preconceived plans that the Pavlous had devised were thrown out the window when the format of this year’s series was revealed to them on the first day of filming in February.

This year the show contestants were allocated run-down houses belonging to the first five decades of the 20th Century. The Pavlous landed with a ramshackle house dating back to the 1920s which they had to renovate to match the art deco, Hollywood glam style, and Spanish Mission influences of the era.

“It took time to get into gear for what was needed. Google and Pintrest were a great help (for research). I did not know much before but now I love the 1920s era. We figured out how we needed to modernise the building and still stay true to the heritage of the home,” said Tash.

One of the requirements of the show was for the contestants to live and work in the house they were renovating.

READ MORE: Record prices for The Block apartments

Harry and Tash Pavlou in gear for the The Block 2020.

 

“We lived in a ‘Block bubble’ in the dust and the cold,” said Tash.

Another star in the Pavlou family proved to be Harry’s wife, Andrea Pavlou, who would regularly pop over to the set with gifts of food. Mrs Pavlou is a hairdresser to the stars having attended to clients such Kylie Jenner, Dannii Mynogue and Hannah Brown. She owns three salons and two barber shops in Melbourne.

Making the challenge even harder was the emergence of COVID-19 on the scene forcing the suspension of filming for four weeks during the first lockdown. Luckily there was time enough to complete the filming by the end of June, before the second lockdown of Melbourne swung into force.

“What I have learnt about Tash during the filming is her resilience. There were times when she pushed me through to complete tasks on deadline. It was something I had not seen in her before,” said Harry.

Tash said: “We learnt to work with each other. We pushed each other when it was needed. It was an experience like no other. What see is what you get in show, there were no edited moments.

We had to renovate in three months and if you think it is hard watching what is happening on TV, it is 100 times harder actually doing it,” she said. “You don’t know what to expect but you learn about yourself and it has been awesome to have done what we did in three months,” she said.

Greek husband-and-wife team George and Sarah Bragias are also starring in The Block 2020. The couple hail from Oran Park in Western Sydney. George is an electrician and Sarah is a teacher.

The winners of The Block 2020 stand to win $100,000 and they will also claim the difference between the sale price of their renovated house and the reserve price when the property is auctioned in November.

The Channel 9 show is screened on Sundays from 7pm and Mondays to Wednesdays from 7.30pm.