When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.
That was the philosophy employed by Dream Home contestant Lara after some budget wrangling with competitors Taeler and Elle.
After the latter two refused to help Lara and Peter out when they needed extra money to finish fitting out a room they were working on, it sparked tension.
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But on Monday night’s episode, the tables had turned.
Taeler and Elle’s lavish spending meant they needed financial assistance to buy the two extra downlights required to finish their entrance hallway.
Instead, Lara took fellow contestant Rhys on a shopping jaunt to Beacon Lighting and spent up big rather than give the sisters any leftover coin from her budget.
Wanting to do some surveillance work on how the money was being spent, Taeler hot-footed it down to Beacon to see if Lara had an extra $180 to spare.
But Lara wasn’t coming to the party.
“She’s come down to Beacon to make sure there’s some leftover money, which isn’t going to happen,” Lara said in a to-camera interview.
“They didn’t come to our rescue,” she added with a shrug.
When Lara’s lighting spend was totalled up, she still had $360 left in the kitty but said she needed it for lamps.
She had enough left over to help Rhys with some garden lights, but when it came to Taeler, she said she “can’t help a brother out”.
Taeler watched as Lara raced around the store grabbing items, including a fluorescent green cactus lamp.
“Do you really need a fluoro cactus?” Taeler fumed as she watched Lara spend all of her budget.
“Did you have any left over?” she eagerly asked Lara as she finished up her shop.
“I think I actually went over by a couple of dollars,” Lara said.
Outside the shop, Lara and Rhys had a bit of a chuckle about what had just gone down.
“Snap!” Lara grinned, high-fiving Rhys, who was clearly on Lara’s side.
Later, Taeler expressed her frustration over Lara’s “revenge shop” — but said that it gave her the added impetus to do well.
“When we’re talking about someone going under the minimum standard for lights in a hallway, I mean, come on!” she said.
“I’m just going to go into problem-solving mode, get our allocation in budget and make sure we can come out of here not broke.”
“This kind of stuff is the stuff that makes me want to do really well this week,” she added.
“We want to be like, ‘it doesn’t matter how much money you give us, we’re still gonna beat you’.”
Dream Home continues 7.30pm Tuesday on Seven and 7plus.