Stars' High-Flying Contractor
"EXCUSE me," said the lady behind the two-way radio. "Are you waiting for the Navajo?"
The Navajo in question was not of the Window Rock, Ariz., variety but rather the Navajo Chieftain eight-seater with the blue plush seats owned and operated by Ben ("I'll Be There in a Heartbeat") Krupinski, ace East Hampton pilot and Contractor to the Stars.
On this Tuesday morning, the blue-eyed, radiant-cheeked Mr. Krupinski is wearing Patagonia and a sea-foam green headset that connects him to air-traffic control.
It is 9:39 A.M. Altitude: 3,500 feet. Visibility: 12 miles. Goodbye, dreaded La Guardia runways. Farewell, belt of thick brown smog cinching Manhattan's waist.
High in the sky, the Long Island Expressway looks like the 1939 General Motors Futurama. Like faces on the Michael Jackson video, shopping malls and parking lots are mutating into green fields and golf courses.
We are entering Krupinskiland: sprawling houses with attitude that look as if they are sprawled out on lounge chairs with a masseuse and a pina colada.
10:40 A.M. East Hampton airport on Long Island, altitude zero. The Navajo Chieftain, one of Mr. Krupinski's "tools" -- he loves to fly, he hates waiting -- is off to Newport News, Va., to pick up some hardware with Dave Stinchi, the co-pilot. Ann Kalla, the architect whom Mr. Krupinski fetched at the airport and with whom he is currently working, is off to a building site in Martha Stewart's Chevy Suburban, one of many famous, exacting clients who doesn't ruffle Mr. Krupinski. Mr. Krupinksi himself is driving his gray Ford pickup with the words "Ben Krupinski Builder" emblazoned in red.
"Unit 1 to base," he is saying, talking into the radio that connects him to his office and a flotilla of 11 vehicles. They are driven by plumbers, electricians, carpenters and other highly skilled artisans beloved both for their precision and for not backing into the Jack Russell terriers in the driveway.
It is springtime in the Hamptons, when crossings and holes -- Hamptonese for streets -- are clogged with swat teams like Mr. Krupinski's. "Traffic! Traffic already!" he mutters. Memorial Day is rapidly approaching -- the Day of Reckoning for the legions of blue-clad elves with buzz saws who toil anonymously on rich peoples' summer houses.
All around, in the front yards of houses with names like "Chez Gustave" and "Briar Patch," signs of spring are found in piles of sod, tipsy trees held up by cables and tight clumps of the fabled Hamptons boxwood wrapped in burlap. Driveways-of-choice are crammed with construction-crew vehicles, the air rife with Neil Diamond and Heavy Metal. The forsythia are blooming. So are the telltale green signs that say "Ben Krupinski Builder."
At around 11:15, Mr. Krupinski pulls into a driveway that is artfully disguised to look like a dead end. Six men are perched on the slanting rooftop of a house, repairing a skylight. Those pesky weathered shingles again.
Wood can twist and warp. Not so lead-coated copper railing. "This is perfection!" Mr. Krupinski said admiringly, coddling a piece of it as if it were a baby chick.
Among those who hire Mr. Krupinski to sink swimming pools and build houses, his sense of perfection is extraordinary. "Extraordinary!" said Ms. Stewart, perhaps the country's most formidable perfectionist. Mr. Krupinski recently restored her 24-room house in East Hampton and devised an elaborate hidden kitchen-exhaust system. He has also shuttled Ms. Stewart, along with her sinks, back and forth from the Hamptons to her home in Connecticut.
He is the man behind the curtain, as deft at sanding the splintered edges of clients' egos as he is at sanding a piece of mahogany. "It takes talent," said Jerry Della Femina, the advertising executive, another client-turned-friend with whom Mr. Krupinski shares red wine and Beefeaters at Gordon's in Amagansett. "In East Hampton, Ben's the star," Mr. Della Femina added. "You walk into a restaurant and everyone's looking up and saying, 'It's Ben! It's Ben Krupinski!' "
Rugged and handsome, the 45-yewar-old, 6-foot 1-inch Mr. Krupinski cuts a striking figure, his strides as long as girders as he bounds out of his pickup. By noon, he has arrived at his largest project, the verdant, multimillion-dollar pondside estate of a young, you-won't-mention-his-name-will-you, mass communications magnate.
Lavishly restored by the architect Peter Marino, the place reeks of instant old money, and status and privilege plumped up like a seat cushion.
In the master bathroom, Mr. Krupinski doesn't notice the sea urchin skeletons placed oh-so-prettily on bars of soap. "Brass fittings," he said, pointing proudly to the shower stalls. He heads into another room. "See how the dormers break out perfectly?"
Outside, he inspects the curve of a template for a teak rail and a band of workers crouched around the pool who are painstakingly bleaching the wooden fence because the owner "doesn't like the teak look."
He gazes at the sunken tennis court, built with retaining walls to "keep the profile low." "Nineteen months," he said. "It really becomes a part of you. You live it and breathe it and sleep it. When it's all over, it's a piece of your life taken away, too."
Around the Hamptons, Mr. Krupinski, modest and caring in the manner of a doctor making house calls, is known as an industrious young man who has sweated for his airplane, his house in Palm Beach and his 42-foot fishing boat, the Bonnie K, named for his wife Bonnie Bistrian Krupinski. As a young man, said Virginia Briggs, the president of the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society, "Benny always gave a lot of himself." As a child, he used to show up on peoples' doorsteps selling candy bars and delivering newspapers.
He typically worked until 11 at night at his father's grocery store, "because that's when we closed," which may account for his seven-day workweek, without lunch.
As a young boy, Benny built model airplanes, not the fancy kinds but the ones with "the Queen Bee motors flown on a piece of string." He got a job with a title company, quit because "it felt like a prison" and then went to work for the Bistrian Sand and Gravel Company, his wife's family business. He started his own in 1980.
His first big-shot client was Adrienne Vittadini, the fashion designer. At rarefied social gatherings, Mr. Krupinski and his wife are sought-after guests. "Real estate is the No. 1 talk at parties," observes Michael Braverman, a real-estate agent, "so it's good to have a reference person."
Part of Mr. Krupinski's appeal is his down-to-earth manner, a novelty for many clients. His willingness to fix his clients' leaky faucets on Sunday morning and shuttle them to J.F.K. to make the Concorde also may have something to do with it.
An uncompleted construction project at Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley's chateau-by-the-sea was rescued by Mr. Krupinski. On the seat of his pickup is a notepad with lists, including "Things to Do at the Brinkleys" (Christies' parents' house down the road). At the Brinkleys, he discusses a marble fireplace surround; the house is filled with blowups of Sports Illustrated and other magazine covers displaying their flawless daughter.
He checks in at the Joels', where Mr. Joel reiterates a famous observation that honesty is a lonely word: he compares most contractors to the woman who yells "I'll be ready in five minutes" when she knows better.
The relationship between a client and a contractor can be a lifelong deal. "You can watch 'This Old House' all you want to, but it's not going to tell you what to expect," the bestubbled Mr. Joel is saying. "There was good word of mouth on Ben," he said. "This is a small town. People wag tongues."
Mr. Krupinski won't wag his. He will not divulge the name of the very-famous architect he will no longer work with. "You need personal communication with an architect or client," he is saying, heading toward the office, appropriately located on Toilsome Lane. "It's a little bit like a marriage. It's no fun if you're not willing to bend. Hello hello hello? Unit 1 to base."
At the base, manned by Chris Hupalowski, his assistant, photographs of his wife and 26-year-old daughter Laura are joined by those of sun-tanned clients aboard the Bonnie K and houses that look like Architectural Digest come to life.
Here is one now, situated next to Calvin's house on a spit of road where the "No Trespassing: Private Property" and "24-hour patrol" signs are sprouting up like dandelions.
Here is another, where a front door abuts a hedge. 'I love a door and a hedge situation!" he said. "Boom! It'll be fabulous."
Not much ruffles Ben Krupinski. "I've never been envious," he said, inspecting a shingle-style tower he is building on the beach. The most difficult part of the job, he added, is "satisfying yourself."
"If I can please me, I can please anybody," he said.
His notepad says: "Talk to Johnsons re: fireplace stucco. Ackermans: Debris removal."
At 4:25, Ann Kalla is waiting on the tarmac of the East Hampton airport, clutching her canvas tote bag and talking on her portable phone. By 5:10 -- ceiling 13,000 feet, temperature 55 -- Mr. Krupinski is circling three times over Glen Cove in rush hour.
How is flying a plane like being a contractor? "No similarities" Mr. Krupinski reports from the cockpit. But both require precision and thinking ahead. In flying, "it's a good job if you get to walk away from it," he is explaining, and perhaps the same can be said of contracting.
Now the Navajo Chieftain has come to a stop at the Butler Aviation parking ramp. "Bye-bye Ben," Ms. Kalla says. "Thanks for the ride."
Mr. Krupinski doesn't say goodbye. He says, "What about the marble?"  AT WORK WITH BEN KRUPINSKI