How Ellery ADU Studio Ontario Was Born in Ontario
We remember the exact afternoon. It was late 2015, and we were standing in a driveway on the east side of Ontario, watching a homeowner argue with two different contractors who were blaming each other for a foundation pour that sat three inches out of square. The designer said the builder hadn’t read the drawings. The builder said the drawings changed after permit. The homeowner, a woman in her sixties who had cashed out a retirement account to build a unit for her daughter, was paying for both of them to be there while they pointed fingers.
That was the moment. We had been working in construction long enough to know this wasn’t unusual. The California ADU law had just changed, and the permitting queue in San Bernardino County was backing up for months. Everyone wanted to build, but the system was built to fail: designer and builder as separate contracts, each with an escape hatch when things went wrong. We drove home that evening and made a promise. If we brought Ellery ADU Studio to Ontario, we would run it as a design-build studio - one contract, one price, one throat to choke. No more “that’s not my scope.” No more surprise invoices because the framer found something the architect missed. We opened our Ontario branch the following spring, and we have never taken a job without a written, line-item quote since.
Nadia Ellery’s Personal Connection to the ADU Trade
I got into this work sideways, and I stayed because of what it actually means to people.
Before Ellery, I spent years in general construction - framing, concrete, the raw physical work of making buildings stand up. I loved the smell of fresh lumber in the morning, the way a wall goes from lines on paper to something you can lean against. But I kept getting pulled into the conversations that happened after the work was done. A homeowner would call me back, months later, in tears because their ADU was leaking, or the electrical didn’t match what they thought they had paid for, or the city had flagged something the original contractor had walked away from.
The work that stuck with me wasn’t the building. It was sitting at someone’s kitchen table in Ontario, spreading out crumpled permits and failed inspections, and realizing they had nowhere to turn. These weren’t naive people. They had done their homework. They had hired separately for design and build because that’s what the industry told them to do. And the industry had let them down.
I started Ellery because I wanted to be the person who didn’t walk away from that table. The Haven Standard - Have it in writing, Arrive on schedule, Verified crews, Evidence on every job, No surprises - isn’t marketing language to me. It’s the list of things I wished someone had promised my neighbors back then. If I weren’t doing this, I’d probably still be framing somewhere, happier in my body but restless in my head. This work lets me use both.
Meet Nadia Ellery - The Person Behind Every Job
Nadia Ellery, Owner and Founder of Ellery ADU Studio Ontario.
I’ve been in the building trades for over ten years, starting with hands-on framing and concrete work before moving into design-build project management. I hold the state licensing required to pull permits and supervise residential construction in California, and every crew working under our name is required to carry the insurance and bonding their trade demands.
What separates me from a corporate franchise technician is simple: I’m the one who answers when something goes wrong, and I’m the one who signs the checks if we need to make it right. I live in this area. My truck has Ontario street dust on it. On weekends, I’m usually restoring old hand tools or walking the Pacific Electric Trail - the kind of slow, repetitive work that teaches you patience for a year-long ADU project.
My commitment to you is personal. When you hire Ellery ADU Studio Ontario, you’re not buying from a brand. You’re hiring me, and I’m hiring the crew, and we’re all accountable to the same written quote.
Our Promise to Ontario Homeowners
Our values aren’t posters on a wall. They’re policies with consequences.
Honest pricing, in writing, before we start. Clause 1 of the Haven Standard means you get a line-item quote with real numbers, not a “starting at” teaser that doubles once we’re in the ground. We learned this the hard way - by cleaning up jobs where someone else used a low bid to get their foot in the door.
Quality parts, documented. We photograph what we find and what we install. If we specify James Hardie siding or a Tuff Shed foundation system, you get the model number, not the category. Evidence on every job means no he-said-she-said if something fails in year three.
Standing behind every job. Our warranty is written, dated, and transferable. If we don’t meet the Haven Standard, we don’t invoice the milestone. No surprises means exactly that.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed - We hold the California contractor licensing required to design, permit, and build residential accessory dwelling units in San Bernardino County and surrounding jurisdictions.
- Insured & bonded - Every pro working under our name is required to carry the general liability and workers’ compensation coverage their state requires, with documentation available on request.
- Years of local experience - Our team has been building in the Ontario area since we opened this branch, with deep familiarity in San Bernardino County permit requirements, setback rules, and utility connection processes.
- Strong local reputation - We are known in Ontario, Chino, Eastvale, and across our service area for documentation-first project management and flat-price contracts.
These credentials matter because an ADU is a six-figure project that lives in your backyard for thirty years. State licensing means we can pull permits without a middleman. Insurance and bonding means your property is protected if something goes wrong. Local experience means we know which plans examiners in Rancho Cucamonga want structural calcs upfront and which ones in Montclair flag utility easements. Reputation means you can verify our work by driving past it.
Rooted in Ontario
This branch serves Ontario and the communities we know by street name: the post-war neighborhoods near Ontario International Airport where lot sizes make garage conversions tricky, the newer developments in Eastvale where HOAs require specific exterior matching, the hillside lots in Claremont where grading plans add months to permitting. We’ve pulled permits at San Bernardino County, worked with Ontario’s planning department on utility separations, and know which seasons the concrete trucks run late because of heat. We’re not pretending to be from everywhere. We’re from here, and we build like it.
Written by Nadia Ellery, Owner at Ellery ADU Studio Ontario, serving Ontario and surrounding communities since 2015.