Mina Starsiak Hawk on the Challenges of Filming ‘Good Bones’ Season 1

Karen and Mina

YouTube Karen Laine and Mina Starsiak Hawk in "Good Bones."

Since the debut of “Good Bones” in 2016, Mina Starsiak Hawk and her mother Karen E. Laine have been fixtures on HGTV. During a recent appearance on the “For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast,” uploaded on August 24, 2021, Hawk discussed her hit show’s premiere season. 


Mina Starsiak Hawk Talked About the Production of Her Show’s First Season

During the podcast interview, Hawk explained she and her family never had an issue with feeling uncomfortable while being filmed. She recalled that the show’s producers attempted to ease Hawk’s family into the filming process by shooting them at “a graffiti festival” in their hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana. The mother-of-two shared that she was confused as to why HGTV needed footage of the festival, but she was later informed that the production team “just wanted to get [her family] comfortable in front of the cameras.” However, they realized it was unnecessary as her family was not shy, despite being followed by a camera crew. 

She noted that she did have to adjust to some aspects of filming during the show’s first season.  

“There’s things that I know now like when you’re done talking, walk out, which seems simple but you’re in a scene and I’m like talking to my contractor and I’m like, ‘Okay, cool so this is what we’re going to do Bob.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah.’ And then we just stand there. When in doubt, walk out. So just things like that when you talk, stay open to the camera, don’t let them film your back,” explained Hawk. 

The Two Chicks and a Hammer owner then shared that she had an issue with a former member of the show’s production team. 

“I don’t cry, we had this little tiny woman that made me cry like day two she was there. She told me I was washed out, I needed to put lipstick on and I think she had come from ‘The Bachelor’ or ‘The Bachelorette,’ so just like a totally different world,” said Hawk. 

She noted that the show’s production team eventually worked well with the employees of Two Chicks and a Hammer. 

“Once we got our team together and we understood what we needed to do for TV and they understood what our construction was like then it started to mesh,” said the famed home renovator. “I think our show — one of the reasons it’s successful because it’s very different. It’s not like a host-based show. It’s not a structurally sound house and you’re just making it pretty again, it’s this really big beast with significant construction and I think in the past few years, TV and like HGTV and design type shows have just started going that direction, which is awesome. It’s more real, I think people like it, but it was a new — it wasn’t fitting inside the pretty little box.”


Mina Starsiak Hawk Discussed How She Became an HGTV Star in 2019

Mina Starsiak Hawk spoke about how she began her career as a home renovator on an October 2019 episode of the HGTV digital series “Rock the Roundtable,” hosted by Orlando Soria. She explained that following her college graduation, she worked as a waitress and she soon decided that she wanted “to buy a house.”

“My mom co-signed for me and we bought a terrible house in a very transitional neighborhood and we just did a lot of the work ourselves because there wasn’t any money left,” said Hawk. 

She explained that they continued to renovate houses and eventually founded Two Chicks and a Hammer. 

During the “Rock the Roundtable,” interview, Hawk also shared that she managed to get her home renovation series “completely randomly.”

“I had a terribly tragic Facebook page for our business, that was called — it is called Two Chicks and a Hammer and a production company gal was looking for somebody else and stumbled upon our Facebook page and my cell phone number and home address were on there … She called so she was like, ‘Have you guys ever thought about making a TV show?’ And I said, ‘No but sure,’” shared Hawk. 

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