For years, viewers watched Mina Starsiak Hawk and her mother, Karen E. Laine, renovate homes side by side on Good Bones. What they didn’t always see was how heavy the emotional cost of working — and living — so closely together had become.
Now, more than two years after publicly acknowledging a painful rift, Starsiak Hawk says things are steadier. Not perfect. But calm. And, by her own account, “good.”
A relationship under pressure
The cracks first became visible in August 2023, when Starsiak Hawk spoke candidly on her podcast, Mina AF. She admitted she wasn’t in a healthy place with either her mother or her brother, Tad.
The timing was difficult. Cameras were rolling on the eighth and final season of Good Bones, and tensions off-screen were at their peak.
While viewers saw polished renovations and familiar banter, Starsiak Hawk later revealed that filming included at least one explosive argument with her mother. The conflict never made it to air — a reminder of how carefully reality TV often separates the finished product from real life.
From family business to separate paths
Starsiak Hawk and Laine founded their Indianapolis-based renovation company, Two Chicks and a Hammer, in 2007. What began as a shared dream eventually became a pressure cooker.
Laine stepped back from the business in 2019, though she remained a regular presence on Good Bones until the original series ended in October 2023.
That ending wasn’t the end of their shared story. In August 2024, HGTV aired a short spinoff that followed the two women as they worked separately, in different states, for the first time.
New spaces, new boundaries
In the spinoff, Starsiak Hawk focused inward, renovating an Indiana lake house into a retreat for her husband, Steve Hawk, and their two young children.
Laine headed south, taking on a fixer-upper in Wilmington, North Carolina, with plans to turn it into a dream beach house and a place to retire.
Those plans shifted. By October 2024, the North Carolina home was listed for sale, quietly closing that chapter.
The show, however, made something else clear: distance, both emotional and physical, seemed to offer breathing room.
Fame’s hidden cost
Looking back, Starsiak Hawk has been open about what the spotlight took from her family.
She’s said she knew fame would be hard — that putting relationships under constant scrutiny can magnify every weakness. What she didn’t anticipate was just how damaging it could be, especially within a family already full of strong personalities and unresolved issues.
It’s a familiar story for anyone who’s tried to mix family, business, and public attention — a combination that leaves little space to cool down when things go wrong.
Moving forward, not backward
Today, Starsiak Hawk says she and her mother are amicable. They spend holidays together. There’s no pretense of returning to how things once were, and no expectation of easy closeness.
Instead, there’s mutual respect, distance where needed, and a shared understanding that healing takes time.
Professionally, Starsiak Hawk is also stepping into a new phase. She’s set to return to HGTV in early 2026 as a competitor on season seven of Rock the Block, paired with retired NFL player turned actor Vernon Davis.
It’s a reminder that while one chapter closed with Good Bones, her presence in the renovation world — and on television — is far from over.
Why this story resonates
At its heart, this isn’t just a TV story. It’s about family relationships strained by success, ambition, and constant visibility.
Starsiak Hawk’s willingness to talk about that cost — without dramatizing it — resonates with anyone who’s had to renegotiate closeness with the people they love most.
Sometimes, progress doesn’t look like reconciliation. Sometimes, it looks like peace.
