Beyonce's and Tina Fey's Contractor Recounts His Best Celebrity Gigs

A contractor is never the most glamorous job on a home design project; it's a behind-the-scenes necessity that means the work is never front and center. But as anyone who has undergone a house or apartment renovation can tell you, it is a role that can make or break the finished product. Take a gamble on an untrained novice and you could end up with still-exposed bathroom pipes six months behind schedule. But a master contractor, like Stephen Fanuka, is a magician of the grout and concrete variety, with no request too outlandish or complicated. Fanuka has certainly parlayed his decades of experience into a truly enviable gig. As one of the most sought-after contractors in New York, he’s worked with celebrities from Beyoncé to Tina Fey and even starred in a six-season reality show about his business, Million Dollar Contractor, which aired on HGTV. We caught up with him to chat about Queen Bey’s interior design style, his craziest client requests, and which celebrities are his favorites.

Architectural Digest: You’ve worked with a litany of celebrities. What was your latest project?
Stephen Fanuka: Annie Leibovitz. I came in to help fix a bad job, someone else’s mess. What’s great about Annie, and this is what makes her so brilliant as a photographer, is she’s hands-on. She doesn’t let other people do it; she makes the decisions. A lot of my very wealthy clients will be like, "I’m going to France, I’ll see you in six months. When I come back, I expect it done." She almost worked with me! She was so happy and we became such good friends that three weeks ago, I was fortunate enough that she took my family portrait.

AD: Oh wow! And you also just finished Tina Fey’s home.
SF: She is the most humble, nicest, sweetest person I’ve ever worked with. And I’m talking about not only celebrities but human beings. Just recently, for my daughter’s 13th birthday, I bought tickets for Mean Girls on Broadway. And I reached out to Tina and Jeff to tell them she was coming and they said, "Don’t even go further!" As soon as the show was over, we got to go backstage and my daughter met the cast; she was like the queen of the prom. And Tina didn’t have to do that.

AD: What’s Tina's style like?
SF: Thom Felicia was the interior designer. It’s traditional, yet eclectic. It’s got modern flair; it’s really nice.

AD: You have also worked with Beyoncé.
SF: I worked with Beyoncé when she was dating Jay-Z. Destiny’s Child was on their last tour. It was before they lived together; she lived in Midtown at the time. Her mother hired me—Tina found me! I ended up doing both apartments, Beyonce and Tina’s. Lovely people. Once again, humble. That’s what I love about all these celebrities. You think they’re not humble, but 99 percent of them really are. They’re afraid you’re there to get something from them. But once you get to know them and they trust you and they see that you’re really just there to help, they become friends.

AD: What was Beyoncé’s style like at the time?
SF: Also traditional. Crown moldings. But how long ago was that? 15 years? Considering the size of that megamansion that they purchased in California, I think their tastes may have changed a little bit. Ha, ha!

AD: What’s the most demanding project you’ve worked on?
SF: I had a client who wanted me to go to Afghanistan to take a stone out of a mountain for their kitchen. And it was during the war, when Russia was in there and I said, "There’s not a shot that I’m going. You can’t pay me enough to go!" Ha, ha! I had another client who paid me six figures to bodyguard a cat for almost a year. I got two bodyguards for the cat, because they didn’t want to displace the cat during the renovation.

AD: What’s a good do-it-yourself project for a novice homeowner?
SF: I like to prep for the winter. Look for any place where the mortar has broken off between bricks on the house or on the stoop. If you don’t fill and seal it with a concrete caulk, when winter comes, water’s going to get in, freeze and expand. And then the bricks start popping off and breaking, and it’s going to cost more money to fix later. Then when you’re done, use some Gold Bond Cracked Skin Fill and Protect on your hands.

AD: What’s next for you?
SF: I took a two-year break from Million Dollar Contractor. After six years of cameras following me eight months out of the year, four days out of the week, from 9 A.M. until 3 P.M., I felt like I wasn’t getting family time. I stopped doing the show and took time off. Now I’m getting ready to come back. Hopefully we’re going to have a new show soon.

Related: Beyonce and Jay-Z Are Too Busy for Their $26 Million Hamptons Mansion