Mina & Karen's Good Bones Rift: How Money Came Between The Mother-Daughter Duo

Mina Starsiak Hawk and Karen Laine co-starred on the HGTV show "Good Bones" for seven years between 2016 and 2023, until financial stress overburdened the daughter half of the duo. The issues trace back to 2019, when Laine retired from Two Chicks and a Hammer, the home renovation company she and Hawk had set up a decade earlier. While Laine continued to star on "Good Bones," she had abdicated her involvement in the day-to-day operations of the business. It became too much for Hawk to carry on her own.

In 2023, Hawk admitted that the situation made her resentful not only of her mother, but also her other co-stars: Austin Aynes, Tad Starsiak, Cory Miller, and MJ Coyle. "I have all the risk. ... Everyone else is there having fun, and they're getting paid to be there, just regular pay, to have fun," she said on her podcast, "Mina AF." Having to handle all the financial transactions and make all the hard decisions while her mother and the team just showed up began to take a toll. "I, as one single human, carry the weight of everything you see on TV. And not in a toot-my-own-horn way," she explained.

While Hawk has openly discussed her strained relationship with her mom, Laine has largely maintained a low profile. However, she didn't hide how much she had been enjoying her retirement. "I'm not working for a paycheck anymore. I retired in 2019, and I can do anything I want," she said in a promo clip for her "Good Bones" spinoff in 2024 (via People). Hawk was in an opposite position, and she felt the weight of it. 

Money and the burden of running a business alone may have been the final straw, but Mina Starsiak Hawk and Karen Laine's relationship was never straightforward — not even when Hawk was a child. "We always have these ups and downs. That's how mom and I have been, honestly, since I was like six," she told Nicki Swift's sister site The List in 2021, two years before Hawk and Laine's HGTV show "Good Bones" ended in the fall of 2023.

In hindsight, Hawk thinks the fragility that marked their relationship should have served as a warning sign before the stress of running a business and starring on a TV show together created an even more dire situation between them. "It's very challenging when you aren't working from a super stable base to then throw in TV, which will just completely f*** your world up," she told People in September 2023. At the same time, Hawk believed having a working relationship with her mom could work because they were in a really good place when they got started. "[I felt like] we made it through all that, we can make it through this," she said in an October 2023 episode of "Mina AF."

In December 2025, daughter and mother spent the holidays together with the rest of the family, showing they're on decent terms. But their relationship isn't fully healed. "It took us a lot of time to get there. So I think it takes a lot of time to kind of get out of it as well," Hawk told People in January 2026.