Mina Starsiak Hawk Reveals She Spent Holidays with Estranged Mom Karen E. Laine After ‘Good Bones’ Rift (Exclusive)

More than two years after revealing their rift, Mina Starsiak Hawk says she’s in a “good” place with her mom.

The HGTV star, who was candid about conflicts within her family during the final season of Good Bones’ original run, addressed where she stands with her mother, Karen E. Laine, during an interview with PEOPLE about the upcoming season of Rock the Block.

“It took us a lot of time to get there,” she says of the deterioration of her relationship with Laine, “So I think it takes a lot of time to kind of get out of it as well.”

“We were all together for the holidays, so we’re all amicable. We’re not like best friends that braid each other’s hair on Saturday nights or anything, but no, it’s good,” she adds.

In August 2023, Starsiak Hawk first opened up about tension between her and her family on her podcast, Mina AF. She said she wasn’t “in a great place” with either Laine or her brother Tad.

The next month, she told PEOPLE that when filming the show’s eighth and final season, “There were definitely some challenging [moments] because my mom and I were in some of the most challenging places I felt we’ve been.” 

While filming the season’s premiere, she said, she and her mother had just had “a knockdown drag-out [fight] during demo.”

“I was like, ‘I wonder if anyone’s going to be able to tell,’” she continued. “And of course, you can’t because that’s the idea. People . . . that’s not why they’re tuning in to watch Good Bones. That’s not what they want.”

Starsiak Hawk started her Indianapolis-based company, Two Chicks and a Hammer, with her mother in 2007. Laine stepped back from the company in 2019, but continued to appear on Good Bones alongside her daughter and their team.

Following the original show’s conclusion in October 2023, a three-episode spinoff of Good Bones focussing on “new beginnings” for the mother and daughter as they took on separate projects in different states premiered in August 2024.

In the first episode of the limited series, Mina, who shares two children — son Jack, 7, and daughter Charlie, 5 — with husband Steve Hawk, transformed an Indiana lake house into a retreat for their family.

In the second and third installments, Laine renovated a fixer-upper in Wilmington, N.C., to create her dream beach house. While she talked about retiring there on the show, she put the property on the market in October 2024.

Ahead of Good Bones’ series finale, Mina reflected on what she wished she had known before finding fame on the show.

“I think I knew … that this was going to be hard and it was going to challenge relationships, because when you put anything under a spotlight, in a pressure cooker, there’s the opportunity to explode,” she said on Mina AF. “And I myself am not stable enough to not explode at times.”

Mina noted that her “whole complicated family organization” includes a lot of different personalities and “people with so many different issues, weaknesses, things left to learn.”

She added, “I just wish I had known how bad it could be.”

In 2026, she’s returning to HGTV as a competitor on the network’s renovation showdown, Rock the Block.

Mina teams up with retired NFL player turned actor Vernon Davis on season seven, which, for the first time, sees HGTV stars paired up with celebrities “who share a passion for design.”

The three other teams include Renovation Resort Showdown’s Scott McGillivray and singer and reality star Brooke Hogan (daughter of the late Hulk Hogan); Battle on the Beach’s Taniya Nayak and 98 Degrees singer Drew Lachey; and Why the Heck Did I Buy This House? host Kim Wolfe and fellow Survivor alum and former Southern Charm star Chelsea Meissner.

Rock the Block season 7 premieres in early 2026 on HGTV.