Meet the Huntington Beach Team Behind Ellery ADU Studio Huntington Beach
We’re the crew that shows up to your driveway in Huntington Beach with a tape measure, a camera, and a printed copy of your property’s zoning. Every person on this page has pulled a permit in Orange County, crawled under a garage slab to check for moisture, and sat in the Huntington Beach planning counter line longer than anyone wanted to. What ties us together isn’t a motivational poster. It’s the Haven Standard, Clause 1 through 7, applied to every ADU we design, permit, and build.
Our People
Nadia Ellery, Owner & Principal Designer
I’ve been running this studio since 2015, and I’ve learned that the most expensive mistake in an ADU project isn’t a beam size. It’s a gap between what the designer drew and what the builder understood. That’s why I structured Ellery ADU Studio as a single-contract design-build operation. I hold a California contractor’s license and spent my first five years in the field before I ever stamped a drawing set. I still walk every initial site visit personally because slope, soil, and existing utility locations don’t read true on Google Earth. In Huntington Beach specifically, I watch for the older slab-on-grade garages near the flood zone, where the city will ask for a geotechnical letter that adds three weeks and $2,800 to a project nobody budgeted for. I tell clients that upfront, not after they’ve signed. When I’m not on site, I’m usually updating our prefab brand specifications, Abodu through James Hardie, so our quotes stay current as those product lines evolve.
Marcus T., Lead Technician & Permit Coordinator
Marcus has been with us four years, and before that he spent six years as a plan checker for a mid-size city in Riverside County. He knows what a complete submittal looks like from the counter side of the glass, which means our Huntington Beach permit packages rarely get kicked back for missing fire-separation details or incomplete Title 24 calculations. He specializes in garage conversion ADUs, where the existing structure’s age and condition determine whether you’re looking at a $75,000 refresh or a $140,000 rebuild. Marcus carries a HAZMAT certification for lead and asbestos assessment, so he can flag material concerns during the first site walk rather than surprising you with an abatement line item mid-project. Off hours, he restores vintage motorcycles and applies the same tolerance-for-no-tolerance to carburetor alignment that he does to footing setbacks.
Dana R., Senior Installer & Site Supervisor
Dana runs our construction crews on new detached ADUs and the heavier garage conversions. She’s been building in Orange County for eleven years, starting as a framer’s helper in Costa Mesa and working her way up through every phase of residential construction. On our prefab and modular coordination jobs, she’s the person who measures the crane access, confirms the pad elevation against the manufacturer’s tolerance, and signs off on the weather-sealing details that keep the warranty intact. Dana holds a CSLB B-General license and keeps current on the seismic anchoring requirements that Huntington Beach adopted after the most recent California Building Code cycle. She documents every phase with the photo record our clients receive, not because it’s policy, but because she grew tired of jobs where nobody could prove what was behind the drywall. Her dog, a skeptical Australian Shepherd named Porter, has attended more site walks than some of our subcontractors.
Eli V., Service Coordinator & Client Liaison
Eli is the person who answers when you call (562) 263-3350 at 9 PM because you’re staring at a neighbor’s completed ADU and wondering if your lot qualifies. He’s been with Ellery ADU Studio two years, and before that he managed project logistics for a commercial concrete outfit in Long Beach. Eli tracks every permit submittal, every inspection request, and every RFI response from the city of Huntington Beach. He knows which inspectors prefer morning appointments and which ones will red-tag a project for a missing egress window dimension that another inspector would have noted verbally. Eli coordinates our Free Second Opinion program, so if you’ve got a written estimate from another builder, he’s the one who schedules Nadia to review it line by line. He grew up in Huntington Beach, surfed the pier break through high school, and can tell you which blocks in the Oak View neighborhood have the utility depth challenges that affect trenching bids.
Sam K., Apprentice Installer
Sam joined us last spring through a union carpentry apprenticeship program and splits time between Dana’s crew and our utility rough-in specialists. They’re learning the full sequence of an ADU build, from layout and forming through finish electrical, rather than siloing into one trade. Sam already runs the laser level and layout string on our foundation jobs with more precision than some journeymen I’ve seen, and they’re the person who updates our digital photo logs in real time so clients see same-day documentation. Sam lives in a converted garage themselves, in a duplex near Beach Boulevard, so they understand the tenant perspective on space efficiency and noise sequencing that textbook training doesn’t cover. They also make a genuinely good cold brew that has improved our Monday morning site meetings.
One Standard, Every Job
The Haven Standard isn’t a slogan we print on the vans. It’s a seven-clause operating agreement that governs how we work, whether the project is a junior ADU interior conversion in Huntington Beach or a new detached unit in another city we serve.
Clause 1 means you’ll have a written price before any work starts, not a ballpark that drifts. Clause 5 locks the scope at signing, so no one on this page will walk up to your door mid-project with an upsell. The documented photo record on every visit, Clause 3, is captured by the same people who did the work, not a separate documentation team summarizing how it felt. And the 365-Day Done Right Promise, Clause 7, is backed by the same license number that appears on every page of this site, verified, not just claimed.
We operate as an independently owned and operated studio. The brands we specify, Abodu through James Hardie, are tools we coordinate within that single contract. The prefab fluency, the permit coordination, the site prep and utility work, it all flows through the same crew you’re reading about here. No designer-builder finger-pointing. No voicemail queue when you need a status update. A live person answers calls 24/7 because Eli and I rotate the after-hours line, and we both know that permit anxiety doesn’t keep business hours.
If you’re considering an ADU in Huntington Beach, call us at (562) 263-3350 to schedule your free estimate. We’ll send the person best matched to your project type, and you’ll get a written price, not a request to call back later for numbers.
Written by Nadia Ellery, Owner at Ellery ADU Studio Huntington Beach, serving Huntington Beach since 2015.