‘He was so angry’

Sonny and Alicia take another major hit this week, when they’re told their floorboards must be ripped up due to water damage.

“I had a full meltdown,” plumber Sonny, 44, tells TV WEEK. “I was the only one who thought to order my ply early: so, when it had to be ripped up, I was very unhappy.”
Will this week’s set back cost the Gold Coast couple a room?
“He was so angry,” dental practice manager Alicia, 42, adds. “Sonny never gets angry so, when he does, I don’t know what to do. I had to try to calm him down.”

For the Gold Coast couple and parents of three kids, daughter Aria, 12, and sons Boston, 11, and Koa, eight it wasn’t the first time they’d experienced a setback in life. They opened up about how, years ago, their small business nearly went under when someone ripped them off.

“They didn’t pay me a substantial amount of money and that put a massive hole in our cash flow,” Sonny recalls. “We were lucky my sister could put us up at her place for a bit.”

“We had to rely heavily on our parents,” Alicia adds. “We had three young kids and it was not much fun. We were playing Survivor before
it was on TV!”
Alicia has reached her breaking point.
As long-time fans of The Block, Alicia and Sonny fully expected the beginning of their Block journey to be full of excitement, but the drama hit from the outset.

“The Gold Coast [airport] shut down because the cyclone hit. We were one of the last flights out,” Alicia says.
Sonny, Koa, Boston, Aria and Alicia are a tight-knit fam!
The couple’s children were forced to flee the family home along with Alicia’s parents. They scattered to different friends’ houses to seek shelter as gale-force winds and wild weather circled their home and the power was cut off. So they started their Block journey with their minds stuck in overdrive.

“There was no off switch that first week,” Sonny says. “No one could go back for a week, and we were fully expecting someone to go home and discover a tree through our house.”
(Credit: Nine)
The pair have claimed to be no “epic renovators,” but the building process isn’t completely abnormal to the happily married couple who have built their current family home and previously renovated a granny flat.

“We wanted to have a crack at The Block as we’ve watched it from day one. We love the show! Alicia started watching season one with her mum,” they said..

After so many years together, facing the positives and the negatives – while taking care of three kids – the pair weren’t “too nervous” about filming.
(Credit: Nine)
“We were 100% ourselves the entire way through and always spoke our mind. We are proud of the way we always said our bit and moved on,” they told us.

“Hopefully we are well received. Although we are not naive to the fact that not everyone will like us. We’ll just choose to ignore, and keep on going. We know who we are and so do all those that we hold close.”

Alicia added: “Sonny and I aren’t afraid of confrontation. We try to always stay factual and keep calm.
(Credit: Nine)
“We are very good at voicing our opinions.”

With a decade of marriage under their belt, Sonny and Alicia hope in ten years from now their children will be “successful young kids who have navigated their way through high school and are finding their way in the world.”

“We hope to have a successful business still running and happily married watching our kids grow up.”