Image: The Block/Channel 9
There’s an unofficial rule each season of The Block – when it’s bathroom week you need the Cursio brothers.
Nicknamed The Block’s favourite tilers, brothers Adrian, Anthony and Gino Cursio from Cursio Tiling have become mainstays of the show, working incredibly hard for the contestants, tiling until the small hours, as well as providing good humour to boost team morale.
The Cursios have been working on The Block for the past seven years, starting with El’ise and Matt, and Luke and Tess in 2019. They have been back ever since, becoming more and more important to the building work and enjoying more and more screen time each year.
This year in Mt Eliza, there are three bathrooms plus a powder room in each house, so there’s a lot of work to be done. And their fame had spread.
The brothers were in such demand that the contestants were all trying to secure their services even before the show started.
Adrian Cursio says that he didn’t want to become the focus of fighting between the contestants, so he and his brothers came up with an unusual solution – they chose a house, not a team.
“I made a decision that I didn’t want to work for any contestants this year,” he said, “because I didn’t want all the arguing. We didn’t want all the contestants to say, ‘why did you work with them, and you didn’t work with us, and why are you helping them and not helping us and all that sort of stuff’.”
“I felt it wasn’t fair to choose one contestant, so we chose the house instead – and we went with house 2.”
House 2 ended up with Gold Coast couple Chantel and Wyatt, so that’s where the brothers have been based this season, occasionally helping out other teams when they have had a spare moment (such as family bathroom week when they helped out Courtney and Sev).
Of course, The Block is still full of drama, and Adrian says that is part of its attraction to the Cursio family.
“We like the drama,” he admits. “We thrive on drama, working hard under pressure and things like that. Some people pay money to do team-building things to really push their limits, and we feel like The Block does that for us for free!”
The Cursio brothers family tilers
Adrian says that he serves two families – that of his family business with Anthony and Gino – and his Block family. The Cursios have been in the tiling business for more than 50 years and it’s their true love.
As well as working for the teams on air each year, he’s done lots of work for the extended Block family. He’s worked with many former contestants with their renovating projects, as well as judge Shaynna Blaze and is set to tile Scotty Cam’s bathroom later this year.
He and brother Anthony are the main Cursio brothers featured on camera, but Adrian has always been the main driver of the Block work. “When we started in 2019, it was just me by myself. We still do have a couple of guys from time to time to come and help. It’s good fun.”
“To be honest, I do most of it, and when I need someone, I’ll call them in to come and give us a hand.”
Adrian Cursio
What other work do the Cursio brothers do on The Block?
The Cursios also do lots of preparation work behind the scenes, says Adrian, extending beyond the 12 weeks the show is on air. “It’s actually 15 weeks because we start a couple of weeks beforehand doing all the preparation because we work for Nine in Six [the main builders of The Block],” he says.
“We had to do the screeds and get all the falls for the showers and all that sort of stuff, so we worked there for two or three weeks before The Block started, preparing every wet area on the block, not just house 2.”
They also do the rectification work after the houses are completed and before they are auctioned.
Do the Cursio brothers cut corners to get all the work done?
Working on The Block is not for the faint hearted. The Nine in Six team has high standards, and everything has to be done to code, in super short timeframes and often in front of cameras.
“I can honestly put my name to every room that I’ve done and guarantee it.”
Adrian Cursio
“Just the same as I’d guarantee any house outside of The Block, because we make sure it’s done not only in a short time frame, but to a high standard.”
Adrian says he and his brothers are like diamonds – “we work well under pressure”, but that’s not the whole story. “They also know that we can bring a laugh to the job,” he says. “We’re family-loving people, so they see that, and we help them in every aspect of the build.”
“It’s not only the tiling side. For instance, if they’re having a hard day, we’ve got a shoulder to cry on. That’s the type of people that we are.”
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