How Ellery ADU Studio Upland Was Born in Upland
We remember the exact afternoon in 2015. A homeowner on San Antonio Avenue in Upland had hired a designer for their backyard cottage, then a separate contractor to build it. The drawings showed a 12-foot ceiling. The foundation was poured for 10. Six months in, the two companies were still arguing about whose mistake it was, and the homeowner was paying rent on an apartment they had planned to leave. We were working nearby on a kitchen remodel and stopped to look. The concrete was wrong. The permits were stalled. The budget was gone. That evening, we called the parent brand and said we wanted to bring Ellery ADU Studio to Upland, because this city deserved something better than the design-versus-build blame game. We promised that every ADU we touched would have one contract, one price, and one person answering for the whole thing.
Nadia Ellery’s Personal Connection to the ADU Trade
Nadia Ellery came to ADU work sideways, through the frustration of watching good projects fall apart.
Back in 2015, she was managing renovations in Claremont and Pomona, mostly kitchens and additions. The work was fine, but the same pattern kept appearing: a homeowner would show her plans from an architect, and she’d know immediately that the foundation detail wouldn’t work with the slope, or the window schedule violated Upland’s setback rules, or the electrical load calculation was for a house half the size. The architect would say the builder was misreading the drawings. The builder would say the architect had never pulled a permit in San Bernardino County. The homeowner, meanwhile, was living in a construction zone and bleeding money.
Nadia started staying late at the office, redlining other people’s drawings, learning the Title 24 energy code, walking into the Upland planning counter with questions. The smell of that office was coffee and dried red ink. The planners started recognizing her voice. She found she liked the puzzle of it, the way an ADU is really three projects wearing one coat: a zoning problem, a structural problem, and a relationship problem between the people who have to solve them.
What gets her out of bed is the moment a homeowner understands that their property can actually produce income, or house their parents, or give their grown kid a door that closes. She has seen people cry at a foundation pour. Not from stress, from relief. If she weren’t doing this, she’d probably be teaching, which in a way she already is, walking people through their first permit application, explaining why a 4-inch sewer lateral matters, showing them the photo documentation from every job.
The ten-plus years since have not made the work routine. Every Upland lot has its own soil, its own oak tree nobody wants to cut, its own neighbor with a strong opinion about height limits. Nadia knows most of the planning staff by now. She knows which inspector will want to see the shear wall nailing pattern and which one wants to talk about the drainage first. That knowledge is not on any certificate. It is lived, earned one inspection at a time.
Meet Nadia Ellery - The Person Behind Every Job
Nadia Ellery is the Owner and Founder of Ellery ADU Studio Upland. She holds the state license required to perform this work and carries the insurance and bonding that protect every homeowner she serves. Her training came from years in the field, from hundreds of hours in plan check meetings, and from the discipline of a brand that documents every decision in writing.
What separates Nadia from a corporate technician is simple: she lives here. Her truck is parked in Upland. Her name is on the permit application. When she quotes your ADU, she is the one who measured your lot, who flagged the easement, who will sign the final inspection card. She gardens on weekends, badly but enthusiastically, and she believes a backyard cottage should look like it belongs in the neighborhood, not like a shipping container that fell from the sky.
Her commitment to you is direct: she will answer her phone, she will show you the photos, and she will put the price in writing before anyone touches your property. That is Clause 1 of the Haven Standard, and she treats it as non-negotiable.
Our Promise to Upland Homeowners
Our values are not posters on a wall. They are policies with consequences.
Honest pricing means we publish our price ranges on this site, in actual dollars, because Clause 1 requires a written quote before work starts. We have lost jobs to lower verbal estimates that ballooned later. We do not play that game.
Quality parts and verified crews means every professional working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. We do not send day laborers to frame your walls. We send tradespeople whose license numbers you can look up, whose background checks are on file, whose work we have photographed and reviewed.
Standing behind every job means the Haven Standard’s written warranty is not a handshake. It is a document with terms, and we have enforced it against ourselves when we missed something. A homeowner in Rancho Cucamonga once found a window leak six months after finish. We did not debate causation. We sent a crew, fixed it, and updated our flashing detail for every job since. Evidence on every job, Clause 4. No surprises, Clause 5.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed - Every ADU we design and build is performed under the proper California contractor licensing required for this work. No shortcuts, no hand-waving about “consulting” your project while someone else does the regulated labor.
- Insured & bonded - Protection that matters when work happens on your property, around your family, with your homeowner’s policy on the line.
- Years of local experience - Since 2015, Nadia Ellery and our team have navigated the specific requirements of Upland planning, San Bernardino County building, and the water districts that serve this area. We know which forms the city wants first and which ones they will ask for later.
- Strong local reputation - Our work is visible in neighborhoods from North Upland to the Foothill corridor. We do not buy reviews or suppress criticism. We answer it, fix what we got wrong, and improve.
These credentials matter because an ADU is a six-figure project that takes a year. You are not buying a product. You are entering a relationship with people who will be on your property, in your records, on your permit history, for months. Licensing and insurance are the minimum threshold for that trust. Documentation and a written price are what keep it.
Rooted in Upland
We measure our work by the lots we know. The narrow parcels near Euclid Avenue where every inch of setback counts. The hillside lots below San Antonio Heights with their grading challenges. The established neighborhoods where an ADU has to match a 1950s ranch, not announce itself. We have sat in the Upland Farmers Market parking lot waiting for plan check feedback. We have walked the Pacific Electric Trail thinking through foundation details. This is not marketing geography. It is where we work, where Nadia lives, and where we will be when your project is done and your tenant moves in, or your mother does, or your kid comes home from college with a key that actually works.
Written by Nadia Ellery, Owner at Ellery ADU Studio Upland, serving Upland and surrounding communities since 2015.