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One week before the eighth season of “Good Bones” debuts on HGTV, Mina Starsiak Hawk announced on her podcast that the Indianapolis-based home renovation series won’t continue after the new episodes air.
Starsiak Hawk co-hosts “Good Bones” with her mother, Karen E Laine. The first episode of the final season will air at 9 p.m. Aug. 15.
Since a pilot episode in 2014, “Good Bones” has showcased the renovation or construction of 13 houses per season. Much of the work happened in the Fountain Square and Bates-Hendricks neighborhoods.
In 2020, when the fifth season of “Good Bones” aired, the show attracted more than 22.6 million total viewers across 14 episodes.
On Tuesday’s episode of her “Mina AF” podcast, Starsiak Hawk described the decision to bring “Good Bones” to an end as “the right thing.”
“This is a good decision,” she said. “This is something made together with the network. … It’s been really hard to do what we’ve all done the last eight seasons. We all just needed to switch it up.”
Starsiak Hawk said she’s downsized her company, Two Chicks and a Hammer, because she’s no longer planning projects for “Good Bones.”
“It doesn’t require 12 people,” she said on the podcast. “I threw everything against the wall to see what would stick to try to keep the team together. … It’s my responsibility to move to the next chapter in a responsible and respectful way, a caring way. I’ve done that. I feel good about that, but it’s still just really hard.”
In 2020, Starsiak Hawk opened Two Chicks District Co., a home furnishings store at 1531 S. East St.
On Friday, Starsiak Hawk announced on social media that she’s the new chief design and build officer for Character, a New York-based home improvement brand.
Although Laine continues to co-star on “Good Bones,” she retired from Two Chicks and a Hammer in 2019. Starsiak Hawk bought out Laine’s financial interest in the company.
Laine is spending part of her summer renovating a 585-square-foot cottage in Wilmington, North Carolina. Wilmington-based newspaper Port City Daily reported that High Noon Entertainment, the Colorado-based company that produces “Good Bones,” obtained film permits to document work at Laine’s cottage.
Laine told the IBJ that she doesn’t know if filming related to the North Carolina renovation will result in a TV show. Interviewed before the release of Starsiak Hawk’s podcast episode, Laine described that status of “Good Bones” as being on hiatus.
“After eight years of doing ‘Good Bones,’ I love our production company,” Laine said. “They are amazingly talented people. They have taught me so much. I don’t want to stop working with them. I would like to work with them until I die, because they’re wonderful. HGTV has been wonderful to us. If I could create content for HGTV until I die, that would be a dream come true.”
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I bet Starsiak wanted more money. Anyone take that bet ?
Good luck WO you support troupe. 2 years from now, Starsiak who?
I’d take that bet.
I think the whole thing just ran its course. Indy is such a small place to be doing a show like that…..how many houses were left to do anyway?
Her entire staff/family left to go elsewhere…. Pretty obvious sign
They are all such nice ‘real’ people.
One thing working against them is that They worked in a very small geographical area as compared with similar rehab shows on HGTV that cover much wider geographical areas (e.g., all of LA, Chicago). Working in such a small area, I’m sure acquisition options have narrowed over the years and the costs of acquisition in their area of concentration also have skyrocketed which made it difficult to get more from the network.
A remarkably good show. It gave Indianapolis a great spotlight in a well thought out manner.
We all age, too. Good luck to the entire group as they move on to their various new endeavors.
Good Bones really did show Indianapolis in a much need positive manner.
Lmao okay
I guess the under the table property deals from the city ran out. Their product sucked. I toured a handful of properties and the finishes were below average at best. If you watched the show and know real estate percentages, their math never added up. The show would sometimes say they sold the house, but you’d see the house was still active at the time of the initial airing. What a joke.
As a REI I’m sure they made tons of $$$ earlier on but I agree as a “made for TV” show the number rarely pencil out. No different than people watching HGTV and think “oh honey” we could that! Then they buy and investment property at 98% of current market value. They’re underwater 4 days into a remodel. haha.
It’s easy to be critical when you are on the outside looking in. I know she made a lot of mistakes. But you always look back and say I could have done better. Or what the **** was I thinking. Sometimes you don’t always make the best decisions in the moment. And working with family was definitely one of those hindsight mistakes. It took a lot of guts to do what she did. I’m proud of her for taking responsibility for her actions and failures. Most people would blame it on someone or something else.