BITTER BATTLE EXPLODES!
‘I WANTED TO PUNCH HIM’
The future of two teams will be left hanging in the balance at the end of Josh and Brandon’s home renovation. In what is set to become the most dramatic clash between two teams in House Rules history, contestants were forced to intervene when Leigh and David almost came to blows over zone wars and Mel and Dave got caught in the crossfire.
‘He was going me and I wasn’t prepared to step down, because I wasn’t doing anything wrong,’ David tells New Idea.
‘It was very close to getting physical. You’re putting an ex-AFL player up against an ex-rugby player and boxer, it was going to go pear-shaped.’
Forced to act as mediator, Chiara stepped in between her husband and the feisty Victorian in an attempt to diffuse the situation.
‘I needed to get him out,’ the 32-year-old mum says.
‘I saw the look on my husband’s face and I could see Leigh getting worked up, and I knew it wasn’t going to end well if I didn’t get in the middle of it right away.’
The altercation began when Kristie approached David and asked him to compromise on zone space.
When the 38-year-old blew up – frustrated at the fiery Victorian pair renowned for stealing space – things swiftly went south.
‘Don’t speak to my wife like that! Calm down,’ Leigh is heard yelling at David.
‘If you’re going to start speaking to my wife like that, I’ll fire up. Don’t speak to her like that.’
Later, talking to the camera, Kristie, 36, says: ‘Leigh would have knocked him out.’
Leigh, 33, adds: ‘We wouldn’t be sitting here and he wouldn’t be standing up, put it that way.’
According to controversial couple David and Chiara, the clash with Leigh and Kristie had been brewing since day one.
‘Leading up to this one, you started seeing who the teams really were,’ David explains.
‘We were all there trying to do these amazing houses for one another, yet people’s intentions weren’t the same as ours.
‘[Leigh and Kristie] came into this competition very cocky, thinking they were going to take this out. They think that they’re better than everyone.’
But things quickly go from bad to worse for David and Chiara following the clash with Leigh and Kristie.
An angry David storms out of a furniture store after an argument with his wife, and it looks like he’s not coming back.
‘I’m going home. I’m over it,’ he says. ‘I’m quitting the competition, I’m out. I just want to go home. I’m out.’
An emotional David tells New Idea that he felt like the pressures of the competition had become all too much.
‘I just wanted to go home to my kids. I’d had enough,’ he spills.
A devastated Chiara reveals she was left to pick up the pieces.
‘I didn’t know what was going to happen, so I just kept moving on and the competition meant everything to me,’ she says.
‘I started making some phone calls. I needed to finish that house.’
Will David return to the competition or will the couple be forced to withdraw from House Rules?