The Big Picture

Good Bones, the popular HGTV series, is returning for its eighth and final season with the mother/daughter duo renovating homes in Indianapolis. This season will feature clean, bright designs and green spaces, as well as collaborations with local artists and craftsmen. The premiere episode starring Mina Starsiak Hawk, will showcase the transformation of a junk-filled duplex into a rental income unit, highlighting Hawk and her mother Karen E. Laine’s talent for renovation and design.

After becoming one of the highest-rated shows on HGTV, Good Bones is back for its highly-anticipated eighth and final season of the beloved home rehabilitation series this month. Since first breaking out onto the scene in 2016, the dynamic team of real-life mother/daughter duo, Karen E. Laine and Mina Starsiak Hawk has swept audiences by surprise with the network’s wildest renovations in their hometown of Indianapolis. With the show delivering some of the highest ratings for the network, including a groundbreaking fifth season that raked in 22 million viewers, Good Bones has cemented itself as one of the best real estate series to date thanks to its affable leads and their stylishly chic and unique renovations. Ahead of the Season 8 premiere on HGTV and Max on August 15, real estate agent, designer, and Two Chicks and a Hammer founder Hawk spoke to Collider in an exclusive interview about the final season, her relationship with her mother, what fans can expect this season, those “magic floating houses” we have all come to be astounded by, and lots more.

With just 10 episodes to go, Good Bones will continue to follow Hawk and her mom, Laine in this final season first announced on Hawk’s podcast Mina AF. The pair will continue to buy more shabby homes in Indy and rehabilitate them while expanding past the Bates-Hendricks and Old Southside neighborhoods. The mother/daughter team will incorporate their signature style with clean, bright designs and green spaces as they put their personal touch on several homes by integrating the work of local artists and craftsmen into each design. As always, the pair demo the houses down to the bare bones and renovate them into dazzling family homes, all while offering a glimpse into their personal lives. In the premiere, Hawk, Laine, and their team will revamp a junk-filled duplex, complete with attic space and a basement. To turn a profit, Hawk will transform the attic into a rental income unit for the new homeowners, by adding bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room with a modern touch.

“That was so fun, and it was really cool to be able to have them come back and see it,” she said. “The couple actually reached out to us personally because they knew we wouldn’t tear the house down. We had a very honest conversation, and I said, ‘Look, I can spend this so I don’t lose my butt on the renovation. You could probably get more from someone else, but they might tear it down.’ So, it was amazing that they chose me to do the property.”

What Is ‘Good Bones’ Season 8 About?
Image via Two Chicks & a Hammer, HGTV/Warner Discovery

Good Bones Season 8 will find Hawk and Laine back in the thick of it as they make their way through Indy and revitalize the neighborhoods, one property at a time. Between the run-down homes to the floating ones, the two will work together with Hawk’s construction company Two Chicks and a Hammer to transform these shacks into stunning suburban remodels. Of course, there’s always something happening beyond the surface with these houses that Hawk is more than accustomed to.

“Things always go wrong,” Hawk told Collider. “When I look back on my very first house, I am so glad that those pictures don’t exist anymore on Facebook. I’m not trained, I guess, I didn’t go to school for design, and it’s something that I’ve developed over the last decade and a half now.” Hawk adds that she works with local craftsmen like the Iron Timbers, who’ve really helped elevate the style of their homes and helped create some “really unique, cool custom-builds.” Audiences can expect some secret doors this season, as well as some very lush and chic custom furniture in the renovations.

The show has also come to be a favorite among audiences thanks to its shenanigans behind the scenes. In the Season 8 opener, fans will get a chance to see a lot more Cory Miller, Hawk’s longtime friend and renovation partner. But is there more to the shenanigans than audiences see? “Cory and I have known each other since he was 11, and there’s always more. I mean, what you guys see is what, like, 43 minutes of an episode that sometimes took a year if we, like, really messed up the schedule,” Hawk said. “There are plenty of times where it is more shenanigans than is on camera, so, Cory knows how to push my buttons. I will say that for sure.”

Why Is There Less Karen E. Laine in the Season 8 Premiere?
Image via HGTV

Good Bones Season 8 is as much a family affair as its previous seasons, but as fans might notice, the premiere doesn’t show much of Hawk’s brother Tad, her immediate family, or even the dynamic pairing of the Good Bones star with her mother, Laine. Instead, things will look a little different, which Hawk hopes isn’t confusing to audiences. Assuring that the team is “still together,” she shares it is just “in different ways as how the business is set up” now. While the premiere episode is aligned with the editorialization of production, Hawk admits it’s also a reflection of the “natural transition” from Laine’s retirement, the business and just taking things more slowly.

“Whereas I would review floor plans, we’d go over those together, I don’t do that, and the design is much more me and touching base with MJ [Coyle]. So a lot of the things that were the role that she played when she was still an active part of the company, with her being retired now, she doesn’t deal with those things,” Hawk told Collider. “She does the things that she really loves doing, and that is landscaping and then her projects — that is where she shines, and those aren’t work for her, so those make sense to keep doing. Whereas dealing with taxes or going back and forth 10 times on the floor plans or dealing with materials getting lost, that’s not fun, and that’s what she retired from. She kept the fun stuff.”

With a show as big and beloved as it is with Hawk and Laine being catapulted into the limelight, Good Bones also creates a lot more layers to their mother/daughter relationship than one would imagine. Though she shares more of it in-depth on her podcast Mina AF, Hawk admits she and her mom have had an “up-and-down relationship” since she was a child. “We’ve had moments where we were probably dysfunctionally close and then moments where we didn’t speak for years. The start of the show was one of those times when we were really, really close,” she admits. “We were like each other’s number one, we were doing this together and as we’ve gotten older, she got married, and I got married, and I’ve had [two] kids; so many things have happened since the show started. She retired. It’s really hard to maintain a good balance when you don’t really have a great base like we do, particularly in the microscope of the show, because it just creates so many more dynamics.”

Hawk adds that it’s “definitely been a struggle” and that it was a factor in her mom’s retirement. “I’m trying to build an empire, she wants to slow down, and until we got on the same page with that and what that looked like, it was tough because I’m like, ‘Why are you going so slow?’ And she’s like, ‘Because I’m old and I wanna hang out and chill.’” The Indianapolis-native shares making the decision to do the buyout of Two Chicks and a Hammer, the company she previously owned with her mother, really helped a lot. “But it’s tough when you’re working with family all the time. We don’t really have time, because we’re filming so much, to kind of go to our corners and then come back. So you don’t have that, like, debrief moment where you can talk yourself through, ‘Okay, this is what happened. This is reasonable.’ It’s just go, go, go. So when we get a break, we kind of all go to our corners and are like, ‘We may be all kind of butt heads, let’s figure out how we move forward from this.’”

How ‘Good Bones’ Challenges Gender Norms
Image via HGTV

It’s no secret that construction is one of the most male-dominated occupations in North America. But while women are underrepresented in the profession and continue to be despite HGTV making it look otherwise with its multiple women-led series, Hawk admits it isn’t an easy field at all. In her previous spinoff series Good Bones: Risky Business, audiences witnessed Hawk in the midst of some serious obstacles stemming from implicit gender bias and sexism. However, in all that she has accomplished, Hawk tells Collider it’s all about “getting older and caring less” because it just doesn’t go away.

“You’re not gonna change people because they don’t even know that they need to change. A lot of them don’t even know they’re doing it. When you’re younger, everything’s such a big deal, and you just care so much about everything. Then you get married, have kids, people die, all these things that create more balance in your life of what’s really important and knowing that, ‘Okay, I don’t need you to understand me. I need you to do what I’m telling you to do,’ and being okay with that is definitely something, for me, that came with age,” she said. “If you want to think I’m the B-word instead of just being direct, that’s on you. Do the thing that I paid you to do. That’s just kind of how I deal with that.”

Hawk adds that the criticism and sexism she faced in Risky Business was not at all edited down, despite many wondering if it was. “The level of challenge and misogyny in that project was, bar none, the worst I’ve ever experienced,” she said. “So, it can be challenging.”

What Shocks Mina Starsiak Hawk After 8 Seasons of ‘Good Bones’
Image via HGTV/Warner Discovery

In a post-COVID world, the trends in home design and structure have certainly changed the needs of homeowners. But when it comes to creating a specific type of home that benefits the buyer as showcased in the Season 8 premiere with an income unit, Hawk says it’s important to consider one’s personal needs and what it means as a functional space. “The biggest thing I’m seeing setting properties aside, which I wish it were an easier answer, I wish it were, like, farm sink versus undermount — it’s having an income potential suite and being able to, if you have the forethought, and you’re doing a design, even if you’re not making an income suite now, having that thought process in the long run,” Hawk said, adding how this was something heavily considered when Laine renovated her own house in Season 3. “Thinking through how you live and want to function, and if there’s a way to tie in thinking about how to do it for resale, I think is huge.”

Hawk says the income suite is not a new space people want, but it is one that aligns with current living situations for a lot of families. “People have really seen the benefit in having that option, whether it’s to rent or to use as a home office. So any time we can do that, it’s a huge selling point,” she said. But when it comes to one thing among these renovations that continually shocks her, it’s the homes that are literally supported by one single, magical brick. Fans of the show will recognize this in just about every other episode of the Indianapolis-based series. “We always have these magic floating houses, and I don’t know how they’ve — the thing is, they don’t crumble until you poke them. They will stay magical forever. You start to move one brick to fix it, and then you’re fixing the whole thing.”

Hawk says that while it might seem like she and her crew are used to seeing them every single time, it’s not the case at all. “It is still always shocking how some of these houses are standing,” she said with dismay, adding how the “ability for things to go awry” even with all her experience is another element that still stuns her. “I’ve had so many experiences in this construction world, and that I still have the ability to royally screw things up or have a contractor royally — I’m like, ‘We’ve done this! Why are we doing it again? Did we not learn from the last thing?’” she said. “It’s a little embarrassing.”