Darren Palmer is no stranger to a renovation challenge, but even he admits One Euro House offered an opportunity too good to refuse.
“Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to go from summer in Australia to summer in Sicily and as it turns out, back to summer in Australia?” The Block judge tells New Idea.
Whilst he and good friend Shaynna Blaze are about to embark on “the opportunity of a lifetime”, The Block fans may notice the absence of Marty Fox – as usually the three are a TV trio!
However, Darren says that whilst they have great camaraderie on The Block, “I think there was only enough space for two of us in our One Euro House“.
“Marty has had plenty of renovation experience but Shaynna and I have been friends since 2012,” he explains, adding that he was excited to take on the challenge with her.
“The fact that we’ve only ever designed one thing together before, a challenge to update some space in a children’s hospital many years ago for The Block, meant the opportunity was both new and exciting to experience together,” he says with a smile.
Fans “may be surprised” but Darren’s happy place is “covered in paint and everything else that comes with renovation”.
“I love plastering and thinking on my feet so the whole project sounded like an amazing opportunity, and to do it with a good friend was the cherry on top.”
Although this show is a dream of Shaynna’s, Darren tells us he was “eager” for the challenge that he could put his “creative energy into”.
“My husband is French so we have spent a lot of time in France, and I have also seen a fair bit of mainland Italy,” he says, adding “I love the idea of some of the grand homes that sit waiting to be brought back to love in both regions!”
In One Euro House, Darren and Shaynna have to work with a tight budget – something he tells us he is “no stranger to”.
“I actually started my TV career on a show called HomeMADE on Channel 9 where we had tight budgets, cameras and renovated 16 whole houses – it was two teams of five so I renovated eight of those in my team – in eight weeks!” he says.
However, as tight as the budget was, he was tempted to put his own money into it.
Instead – he put his own Lustre Bronze tapware throughout the entire house.
He tells New Idea he enjoyed the challenge because he “loves constraints”.
“I love being able to think quickly and problem solve on the spot, though not having the relationships I have built over my career did make the process much more difficult than a tight budget project in Australia,” he said.
“That said, I hope the viewers at home love the difference between what we were able to achieve compared to the types of home I design in Australia,” he adds.
Although – filming in a different country presented its own challenges, pointing out the language barrier.
“We had some great translators and multilingual collaborators, like Scott our awesome builder who is English but speaks perfect Italian,” he says, adding that “without Scott the whole project would have been nigh on impossible so I recommend to anyone thinking about doing a renovation overseas to find a great builder like him.”
He says he’d love to do it again, even if it was “a lot of work”.
“The days were long and we did a lot of driving and travel as well as the hard work of renovation so I needed a good rest after we wrapped but now some time has passed I reckon I’m recharged enough to take on the whole thing again and maybe even raise the bar,” he says.
“The world is quite literally our oyster.”
