Good Bones’ Karen E. Laine Says Her Kids ‘Destroyed’ Her Dreams After Buying a New Home

One reason HGTV fans love Karen E. Laine so much is because she is an open book. The Good Bones host admitted that her kids ruined some of the plans she had for her retirement after buying a new home in Wilmington, North Carolina.

“I came to Wilmington because I had an experience here, and then I loved it still, so Wilmington is just as wonderful as it’s always been,” the former lawyer reflected during an episode of the “What’s Up Wilmington” podcast on Tuesday, October 31. “People are so nice here. The idea is to retire here, but my children have destroyed my dream.”

Karen, 62, is a mom to kids Mina, CR, William and Kelsy. The DIY expert starred with Mina, 38, on Good Bones for eight seasons before the series finale aired on October 17. The mother-daughter duo is currently not on “good terms.”

“I had one son [who is] married with four kids in San Francisco,” the TV personality said of her family dynamic before she bought her new house. “It doesn’t matter if I live in Indianapolis or Wilmington because it’s a plane flight. And we’re great.”

She explained that two of her children are experiencing some huge changes in their lives.

“Well, [my son] moves to Indianapolis with his four kids, and then my youngest daughter, who I really thought maybe was never going to have kids — I trained myself not to ask her because she doesn’t want to be bothered like that and it’s rude to keep asking your child, ‘So when are you going to have a baby?’ That’s rude, so I don’t ask her — she’s pregnant. She’s due in December,” she announced.

Now, Karen has five grandkids in Indianapolis that she didn’t have when she first bought her new house. She admitted that it’s going to be “a trickier balancing act” to split her time between Indianapolis with her grandkids and Wilmington working on her “beautiful little house.”

“I think in the wintertime, Wilmington is going to win for sure,” Karen said of being a fan of the warm climate.

The doting grandmother also shared that she has a sense that she is in the “right place at the right time.”

“When I plant my feet on the ground at my little house, it’s like they don’t want to go anywhere,” Karen said of her Wilmington cottage. “This is where they belong.”

The candid confession came just after Karen revealed that she decided to plant roots in Wilmington after separating from her husband, Roger Rominger. The former couple filed a joint petition for legal separation on April 26, 2022, according to court records viewed by Closer.

“Now I can retire anywhere I want,” she said of their split and differences of opinion on where to retire.