'Good Bones' Season 5 Episode 1: Mina and Karen turn their most expensive investment yet into a gorgeous home
The hosts of HGTV's famed lifestyle series 'Good Bones', Mina Starsiak Hawk, and Karen E Laine are back. Mina, a real estate agent and Karen, a former defense attorney, began remodeling house in their free time in the Fountain Square and Bates-Hendricks neighborhood of their hometown, Indianapolis. In 2008, they decided to open a home rehab business, 'Two Chicks and a Hammer, Inc.' Their mission is to redefine Indianapolis one house at a time, by buying old dilapidated homes and rehabbing them into stunning, modern, urban remodels. The mother-daughter duo best known for fixing and renovating houses work on their most expensive investment, to date, in the season five premiere of the show.
Mina and Karen have had their eye on a charming little bungalow on Woodlawn, in Indianapolis' trendy Fountain Square neighborhood. They brought it from homeowners George and Paula, the former having grown up there. The two had started dating when they were teenagers and lived in the house for most of their lives. The house initially belonged to George's parents, who owned the house for 50 years or so. Although the couple could have easily sold the house to a developer, they knew it would most likely be torn down and new infrastructure would take its place. However, they didn't want that and instead sold the property to Mina and Karen because they were certain that the duo would respect it and its history.
Fountain Square is the most stable area for purchasing a house, said Mina and she was very happy that she had invested in George's home, but it did cost her a pretty penny. She bought the house for a whopping $130,000, which is their most expensive investment since they began 'Two Chicks and a Hammer Inc.' Once it is remodeled and refurnished into a modern, urban home that will attract prospective buyers, Mina hopes to list and sell it for $300,000. The inside of the house, however old and charming, is pretty much falling apart and both Mina and Karen know they have a lot of work ahead of them and will have to stretch their budget to a new extreme for renovations. The current infrastructure is 1,375 square feet and houses three bedrooms, two living rooms, a dining room, a kitchen and only one bath. After a quick and extensive scope of the house, Mina and Karen conclude that they will be working with at least a $100,000 budget.
It seems that floors of the house incorporate hardwood in a gorgeous mahogany shade and has been well-preserved thanks to the carpet that has lain over it for presumably the whole time George's family lived there. They decide to keep the existing hardwood floors, and simply scrub and refinish them, rather than hide them underneath a carpet. For the interiors, they turn one of the larger living rooms into a master bedroom, while another smaller bedroom that adjoins a slightly larger bedroom becomes a walking closet and en-suite bathroom. The basement needs some work too, they realize, as a toppling chimney has been responsible for major cracks on the living room walls. In addition, the house has too many narrow doors and a small rounded space for a kitchen, which seems too tight. They decided to do away with the doors and create an open floor plan, beginning all the way from the hallway at the front door, through the family living room, dining room and the kitchen.
For the exterior, the house needs a new siding, while the brickwork requires repairing. With the estimated renovation costs, the investment totaled up to $230,000 and their possible listing will leave them with a $70,000 profit. That set, the demo of the interiors began and the team faced a couple of roadblocks and budget problems throughout the renovation process but persevered anyway. The duo's main aim was to give the house their signature eclectic Cali feel, combining its original features with some modern reinforcements. Karen saved some old pieces from the house, that she still thinks has potential if refurbished and put back in place like the chandeliers and cabinet handles, while Mina added all the modern touches that the house needs to look chic, inviting and urban. Karen scraped out the wallpaper, to find a gorgeous teal wallpaper beneath, that has distressed over time. She decides she wants to adds a rustic look to the house, but further distressing it, artistically and then adding polyurethane to it.
They add subtle and bold details to the house, include a fake wainscotting for the living room, black countertops for the kitchen, myriad shades of green as wall paint, patterned Herringbone tiled walls with gold accents to add sophistication and soft green paint to go on the exterior of the house. As planned they scrub the hardwood floor themselves and put the original refurbished elements, which adds a sense of coziness and comfort to the overall style of the house. Once the house was finished, with interiors completed and the furniture moved in, Mina and Karen invited the former homeowners George and Paula to take a look at their newly remodeled home. The couple was taken aback and awestruck by the renovations but were nevertheless swept away by the sentimentality of having preserved the character and original framework of the home. In the end, the renovation costs had exceeded the duo's initial budget by $50,000 bringing the total to $150,000. Their total investment on the house amounted to $280,000, prompting Mina to list it for $315,000. The house was sold to a young couple for $310,000, leaving the team with a profit of $30,000.