Photo by Madison Mascare
Hi, HGTV fans! Thanks for dropping by for another recap of Good Bones Season 5. I’m Megan Fernandez, and I often write about homes for Indianapolis Monthly (including the August cover story). My design-savvy colleagues Kristin Sims and Josh Cox are here, too, noticing the truly important stuff.
This episode, “The Boho Bungalow,” completes a trilogy of sorts here in Recapland. Two Chicks headed to my beloved neighborhood, Garfield Park, which is adjacent to their usual stomping grounds of Bates-Hendricks, Old Southside, and Fountain Square. We’re the one with the gorgeous 128-acre park and formal gardens, ahem. This season has already ventured into Josh’s former neighborhood, Old Northside, and Kristin’s, Irvington. It’s like this was meant to be.
One of the reasons I wanted to live in Garfield Park is because Big Car, a public-art and placemaking group in Indianapolis, set up shop here and started doing cool things in the neighborhood. One of those is the Artist and Public Life Residency, a project to renovate homes and make them available as affordable housing for creatives. Two Chicks partnered with Big Car on this episode’s house, a two-bedroom, one-bath that will be made available through the APLR program.
Mina, Steve, baby Jack, and Karen met in the park.
Josh: Could Karen have rolled up on any more of a Karen-style bike?
Kristin: It’s like an old low-rider Schwinn, but the banana seat was replaced with an office chair. I loved that Jack had a tiny Indiana tee of his very own.
Megan: Like his mama’s style. A couple scenes later, we go from frolicking in the park to demo day in the dead of winter, fresh snow and all. Mina said through a scarf, “We’re gonna mess with the outside TBD.”
Josh: But inside, they encountered the basement of horrors. The potential for mold in that basement sent chills down my spine. I was a little bothered that they never revisited the result of fixing that mess.
Megan: It might have cost too much? I don’t know. The team did a great job keeping costs down since this will be affordable housing. They didn’t want to take down walls. But Karen talked her way into a project: Take a wall down to the studs between the living and dining rooms, and she would cover it in transparent polycarbonate, creating some sense of openness.
Kristin: My first thought was, No! Artists need wall space! But then the potential owner was a singer, not a painter. Still, I hated the idea.
Josh: That’s how I feel about the backsplash tiles. They stressed me out.
Megan: Oh, really? I love them! My favorite tiles of the season.
Josh: The finished product, to borrow a quote from a favorite movie—“She’s a full-on Monet. It’s like a painting, see? From far away, it’s OK. But up close, it’s a big old mess.”
Megan: Clueless.
Josh: Ding, ding, ding.
Kristin: I’m with Josh. I somehow like the hand-drawn look, but all together it’s too much for me. I might have liked it better as an accent. And while we’re in the kitchen, was it an illusion or was the refrigerator placed at an angle?
Megan: You’re the angle police. The other big project was distressing the original wood floors upstairs in the bedroom.
Kristin: The floors ended up so much better than expected. Just the right amount of authentic distress. I was glad that they didn’t have to fake it.
Josh: The distressed floors were beautiful and created a through-line from the deconstructed wall downstairs to the floors on the second floor.
Megan: My favorite part of the floor project was the debate—don’t worry about how we got here—about whether Cory’s stripper name should be Cory Silver, Cory Gold, or Cory Copper.
Josh: Cory Silver would have performed at the now-defunct Horny Pony (The Unicorn Club), and Cory Gold would be performing in Vegas. So I choose either of those.
Kristin: I wasn’t listening. My mind was still boggled with Cory’s claim that his jeans cost just $20.
Megan: He’s pragmatic. Tad trolled him about his $200 jeans, and Cory, like a good Hoosier, explained that they were cheap and he just likes to take care of them. Hey, the boys found a hatchet in the wall during demo.
Kristin: It was surprisingly sharp. Much better than the one I just bought at Harbor Freight!
Megan: So the polycarbonate wall didn’t happen. Karen decided to skip it, but instead of adding drywall, she left the studs exposed to create a bookshelf by adding horizontal pieces. And of course she hung some macramé, too.
Kristin: I am so over macramé. A little goes a long way.
Megan: Yeah, but when Karen put a macramé planter on her head, MJ pointed out that’s what she’d wear to Coachella.
Josh: Someone get Netflix on the phone because I would watch the hell out of that, and she could marry some folks with her new divinity degree!
Kristin: In the end, the space felt comfortable and not overly crowded, like some episodes.
Josh: During staging, Mina was like, “It’s a throw, you throw it.” Probably my favorite line from Mina all season. I really enjoyed the finished result in the master bedroom. Do we know who did the artwork in the dining room?
Megan: Isn’t that the paint-splatter canvas the group did after Karen ditched the idea of paint-splattering a floor?
Kristin: I noticed that cool piece, too. We were calling them Hoosier Pollocks in our house.
Megan: The young musician who walked through the house and sang “Amazing Grace” in the bathroom ended up buying the home! It was just $120,000, and it should appreciate a lot by the time she can sell it in seven years, which is a minimum residency requirement for the APLR program. Her name is Kiella Squires, and she says the house has great acoustics. Say congratuations to Kiella!
Josh: I love this program and had no idea such things existed for artists! What a great way to draw more talent downtown.
Megan: We also have to say congratulations to Mina, Steve, and Jack. They took another shot at IVI and it looks promising! We know that it works, but it’s still great to see how happy the news made them! I didn’t find a good way to say this anywhere else, but Karen and Mina fielded our burning questions about this season on Facebook Live last week. See the video here.
