Karen E Laine’s retirement from Two Chicks and a Hammer, the Indianapolis renovation company whose work is documented on HGTV’s Good Bones, has meant a bigger role for project manager Cory Miller in Season 6. While Laine is still on the show, Miller has taken her place as the person who reviews blueprints with Two Chicks owner and show star Mina Hawk in each episode at her personal Carrara-marble kitchen island. Miller even starred as a client this season when Two Chicks renovated a house for him as a first-time homebuyer. We caught up with Miller to dish on all things Good Bones. (You can catch up on the season through our weekly recaps.)
Do you watch new episodes on Tuesday nights, like the rest of us, or do you see them in advance?
I wait for them to come out every Tuesday night. It’s a tradition, I guess you could say.
Are you watching for certain moments that you wanted to make the edit?
After filming countless hours for 13 houses, I forget what all we filmed at times. Sometimes it’s all just a blur. I do wish they had shown more staircase installation in Episode 6.
Do you film all of the blueprint scenes at once?
We typically review the blueprints as the architects spit them out, but yes, multiple at a time in Mina’s house.
Now that your own house has been featured on the show, do fans come by? They come to Indy to shop at Two Chicks District Co. and drive by the homes.
A ton of people have been driving by and slowing down to gawk, but none have knocked on my door … as of yet.
How is the house different now than what we saw on the show?
I painted the ceiling black in the main bathroom. They’re 10-foot ceilings, and I wanted to embrace that. I moved the living room around to make it more to my liking, so now the couch faces the TV. And I transferred a lot of the guest bedroom’s staged items to the main bedroom.
In the last episode, “Claire’s Crooked Cottage,” Mina was wearing a Deer Creek Music Center T-shirt during your blueprint review. Neither of you seems old enough to have gone when it was Deer Creek.
Mina and I are indeed old enough to have experienced Deer Creek, believe it or not! I went to one concert while it was still Deer Creek, and that was Spice Girls. It wasn’t by choice, but those concerts are flooded with hot females, which was good future knowledge.
The “crooked” part of Claire’s house was the roofline—the peak was way offset. Did you guys have a theory on how this happened in the first place?
My theory is that when the house was originally built, the cut guy down below cutting the rafters cut one side too short! He must have forgotten the coffee thermos that morning.
What was your favorite part of that episode—which was different than most because a client was involved and got her hands dirty, renovating a house to give to her daughter?
I think this house turned out super-cute, but my favorite part is that Kate did this whole process for her daughter, Claire. It melts my heart!
We also learned in that episode that not only are you afraid of heights, you’re afraid of mice.
I freaking hate, hate mice and anything with a tail that doesn’t have fur on it! Season 7, which we are filming now, has a house packed full of freaking mice! Hell no … burn it down!
You always look great in your aviators, but the chunky sweater you wore for your own house reveal was particularly dapper.
That was actually [designer] MJ’s sweater, of course. In fact, I think he was wearing that same one earlier in the episode, when he was performing final staging with Mina before the reveal.
About dropping a whole tree on a parked car, to prank Karen. What didn’t we see?
The tree prank was supposed to be pulled on me, but Chad, the arborist with Artistic Tree, spilled the beans to me by accident.
Marathon, the gas station, made a couple conspicuous appearances in Episode 6. Are they a sponsor?
That would mean someone is getting paid by them, and it sure isn’t me.
