How Ellery ADU Studio Los Angeles Was Born in Los Angeles
We remember the exact afternoon in late 2015 when we knew Los Angeles needed something different. Nadia Ellery was sitting in a coffee shop on Venice Boulevard, reviewing permit drawings for a backyard cottage in Mar Vista. The homeowner, a teacher who’d saved for six years, had already paid one architect and one contractor. Neither would speak to each other now. The drawings didn’t match the foundation that had been poured. The permit was stalled at LADBS, and the teacher was paying rent on an apartment she couldn’t afford while her backyard sat half-dug.
That was the pattern we kept seeing. California’s ADU law had just changed, and the gold rush was on. Contractors were adding “ADU services” to websites without knowing the difference between a junior ADU and a detached unit. Designers were drawing plans that couldn’t be built. Homeowners were left holding two contracts, two timelines, and the blame when they didn’t match. Nadia called us that evening and said: we’re bringing Ellery ADU Studio to Los Angeles, and we’re doing it with one contract, one price, one person accountable. No more designer-builder standoffs. No more surprise costs after the shovel hits the dirt. That was the promise, and it’s the one we still keep.
Nadia Ellery’s Personal Connection to the ADU Trade
Nadia didn’t stumble into ADU work. She was pulled into it by the smell of sawdust in her grandfather’s garage in the San Fernando Valley, though he wasn’t a builder and never taught her a trade. What he did was fix things obsessively, and he let her hand him tools while he talked through every decision out loud. Why this joint and not that one. Why measure twice when the lumber yard would cut it wrong anyway. The sound of a hand plane on redwood, the particular grit of California dust on concrete, the way afternoon light came through a garage window at 4 PM - these are the sense memories that surface when Nadia walks a job site in Studio City or Sherman Oaks.
She started in residential architecture in 2008, doing additions and remodels, and watched the 2008 crash turn every project into a negotiation over what could be cut. The ADU law change in 2015 felt different. It wasn’t about bigger houses for richer buyers. It was about teachers, nurses, adult children, aging parents - people who needed square footage they could actually afford to build. Nadia spent that first year in Los Angeles walking properties in Culver City, Westchester, Inglewood, Hawthorne, learning which blocks had alley access, where the sewer lines ran, which neighborhoods had design review boards that added six months. She learned that an ADU in Venice faces salt air that corrodes standard hardware, that Beverly Hills has a separate planning process most contractors don’t know exists, that West Hollywood’s hillside grading rules can kill a project before it starts.
If Nadia weren’t doing this, she’d probably be restoring old boats or teaching drafting to high schoolers. What gets her out of bed is the same thing that kept her in her grandfather’s garage: the moment when a homeowner understands their own property differently. When they realize their backyard isn’t just yard - it’s housing, it’s income, it’s family close by. That look hasn’t changed in eleven years.
Meet Nadia Ellery - The Person Behind Every Job
Nadia Ellery is Owner and Founder of Ellery ADU Studio Los Angeles. She holds a California architectural license and has spent her entire career in residential design-build, with her professional roots in Los Angeles dating back to before the 2015 law change that reshaped everything. Her training spans traditional architectural drafting, structural coordination, and the specific permitting workflows of LADBS and surrounding jurisdictions including Culver City, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood.
What separates Nadia from a corporate project manager is simple: she’s on your property before the contract, during the rough framing, and at the final walkthrough. She carries a notebook with hand sketches of every ADU she’s designed, and she reviews photos from every job weekly. On weekends, she runs trails in the Santa Monica Mountains with her dog, a ritual she says keeps her honest about what “outdoor living” actually means in Southern California.
Her direct commitment to you: Nadia Ellery reviews every permit set before it leaves this office and personally signs off on every written quote. If your ADU isn’t right, it’s not finished.
Our Promise to Los Angeles Homeowners
Our values aren’t posters on a wall. They’re the rules we operate under, drawn from what went wrong on jobs we inherited from other companies and fixed.
Honest pricing. We quote in writing before anyone picks up a hammer. In 2019, a homeowner in West Los Angeles called us after another company had “discovered” $34,000 in unspecified foundation issues mid-project. We found the issues were real but half that scope, and we built the unit for the price we’d quoted. That experience became our policy: no change orders without a second written signature, ever.
Quality materials. We specify James Hardie siding on coastal-facing ADUs because we’ve replaced too much water-damaged stucco in Santa Monica and Venice. We don’t offer “good, better, best” tiers that confuse the choice. We offer what works for your specific lot, and we explain why.
Standing behind every job. Our warranty isn’t a document in a drawer. It’s a phone number that reaches our local team, and a photo record of what we actually built, stored and accessible if you sell your home or need to reference it in ten years.
Our Credentials
Every professional working under the Ellery ADU Studio name in Los Angeles is required to hold the state license and insurance coverage their role requires. We are state-licensed. We are insured and bonded. Our local team has built its expertise specifically in the Los Angeles market, with years of direct experience navigating LADBS, local design review processes, and the particular conditions of building in this region’s varied terrain and climate zones.
We maintain a strong local reputation based on completed work and documented outcomes, not marketing claims.
Why this matters to you: an ADU is a six-figure investment built on your property, often within feet of your main residence. The person designing it needs to understand Los Angeles soil conditions, hillside grading requirements, and which neighborhoods have additional design review. The person building it needs insurance that covers your property, not just theirs. The person permitting it needs relationships with local plan checkers that come from repeated, recent work. Credentials aren’t paperwork. They’re the difference between a project that finishes and one that stalls.
Rooted in Los Angeles
Our office sits where we actually work: Los Angeles, with our project footprint running from the coastal zones of Santa Monica and Venice through the inland valleys of Studio City and Sherman Oaks, south to Inglewood and Hawthorne, and through the established neighborhoods of Westchester, Culver City, West Hollywood, and Beverly Hills. We’ve designed ADUs on lots with alley access in Venice, on hillside grades in the Hollywood Hills, and on flat suburban parcels in the South Bay. We know which blocks in West Los Angeles have mature oak root systems that affect foundation design, and which Culver City neighborhoods fall under the Helms Bakery District’s specific guidelines. This isn’t territory we cover. It’s territory we know.
Written by Nadia Ellery, Owner at Ellery ADU Studio Los Angeles, serving Los Angeles since 2015.