How Ellery ADU Studio Fontana Was Born in Fontana
We remember the exact afternoon. It was late 2015, and the California ADU law had just changed. Permitting queues that used to take six weeks were stretching past six months, and suddenly the permit itself was the bottleneck that broke projects. We were sitting in a living room in Southridge Village, Fontana, with a homeowner who had hired a designer in Los Angeles and a builder from Riverside. Neither would answer the other’s calls. The foundation was poured three inches off the setback line, and the city inspector red-tagged the whole job. That homeowner was out forty thousand dollars with nothing but a concrete slab and two professionals pointing at each other.
We opened our Fontana branch because that scene kept repeating. The ADU projects that fail are almost always the ones where the designer and the builder each have someone else to blame. We brought Ellery ADU Studio here because this city deserved a design-build studio where the drawings, the permit set, and the construction live under one contract with one flat price. That homeowner in Southridge Village never got their ADU. We promised ourselves that everyone we worked with in Fontana would.
Nadia Ellery’s Personal Connection to the ADU Trade
Nadia Ellery got into this work the long way around. She started in 2015, the same year the laws changed, working permit drawings for a firm in Ontario. The office smelled of ammonia from the blueprint machine and stale coffee. She spent her first winter driving the 10 Freeway at 6 AM with rolled sets sliding around her back seat, delivering revisions to Fontana’s building department before the counter opened. The permit techs knew her by name. She learned what they actually wanted to see on a plan check, not what the code book said in theory.
The moment that hooked her was a job in Rancho Cucamonga, not far from our Fontana service area. A retired couple had spent eleven months and two different architects trying to permit a 480-square-foot unit for their daughter. Nadia sat on their porch with a red pen and their rejected plans. The third revision she drew that weekend passed on the first submittal. The daughter moved in before Christmas. Nadia still describes the smell of the orange tree in their yard, the way the grandmother pressed a bag of home-dried apricots into her hands, the feeling that she had untangled something that mattered to real people.
That is what gets her out of bed. Not the construction. The permit. The thing that stops people from housing their parents, their grown children, their rental income. Nadia will talk about setback calculations the way other people talk about fishing. If she were not doing this, she would probably be drafting somewhere obscure, municipal code in one hand and coffee in the other, still trying to make the system work for the person on the other side of the counter.
She has been at this for over ten years now. The 10 Freeway still smells the same in the early morning. The Fontana building department moved to a new location, but some of the same plan checkers are still there. Nadia knows their questions before they ask them.
Meet Nadia Ellery - The Person Behind Every Job
Nadia Ellery is the Owner and Founder of Ellery ADU Studio Fontana. She holds a California contractor license and has spent her entire career in the Inland Empire ADU market, from the first wave of garage conversions in 2016 through the recent state law changes that opened single-family lots statewide. Her training was practical and self-directed: thousands of hours in plan check lines, hundreds of conversations with inspectors, and the hard education of jobs that went sideways and had to be rebuilt.
What separates Nadia from a corporate estimator is that she still visits every job site before we quote. She carries a tape measure and a camera, not a tablet with preset pricing. On weekends she restores vintage drafting tools, the kind with brass fittings and weighted lead holders. She says it keeps her honest about line quality.
Her commitment to you is direct: every Fontana homeowner who calls us speaks with someone who can read their plans, pull their permit history, and explain exactly why the city flagged what they flagged. Nadia does not delegate that.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Fontana Homeowners
We operate under The Haven Standard, a five-clause code that governs every ADU we design, permit, and build in Fontana and the surrounding cities.
Have it in writing. Clause 1 means a flat price, a written scope, and a written warranty before anyone touches your property. We learned this from the Southridge Village job that started our branch. A verbal quote is a dispute waiting to happen.
Arrive on schedule. Clause 2 means a real window, a named crew lead, and a text when they are on the way. We do not give you “sometime Tuesday” and disappear.
Verified crews. Clause 3 requires that every professional working under our name in Fontana holds the license and insurance their trade requires. We verify it quarterly.
Evidence on every job. Clause 4 means photos and readings of what we actually found: the existing foundation depth, the sewer lateral condition, the electrical panel capacity. You get the file.
No surprises. Clause 5 means no door upsell, no scope creep, no “while we are in here.” The price we write is the price you pay.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed contractor - Every ADU we build in Fontana is covered by a California contractor license held in good standing. For a homeowner, this means the state has verified our experience and bonding, and you have recourse through the Contractors State License Board if something goes wrong.
- Insured and bonded - We carry general liability and workers compensation coverage for every job site in Fontana. This protects your property and protects you from liability if someone is injured while working on your ADU.
- Years of local experience - Our Fontana branch opened in 2015, and Nadia Ellery has worked exclusively in the Inland Empire ADU market since then. We know Fontana’s specific zoning overlays, the city’s particular fire sprinkler triggers, and which plan checkers want structural calculations stapled and which want them loose.
- Strong local reputation - We are not new to this market. Homeowners in Southridge Village, Sierra Lakes, and throughout Fontana have used us for garage conversions, detached units, and junior ADUs. We are invited back.
These credentials matter because an ADU is a year-long relationship and a six-figure decision. You are letting someone into your property, your finances, and your family’s living situation. State licensure, insurance, and local experience are the minimum proof that we understand the weight of that.
Rooted in Fontana
Our office sits in Fontana because this is where we do our work, not where we commute to it. Nadia has driven the stretch of Sierra Avenue between the 210 and the 10 more times than she can count, dropping permit sets, checking on foundations, meeting inspectors. We know which mornings the fog sits heavy in the northern neighborhoods and which afternoons the Santa Ana winds blow dust through open framing in the southern developments. We have worked in Southridge Village, Sierra Lakes, and the older neighborhoods north of Foothill Boulevard where the lots are deep and the ADU potential is often overlooked. Fontana is not a territory on our map. It is the place where we learned this trade.
Written by Nadia Ellery, Owner at Ellery ADU Studio Fontana, serving Fontana and the Inland Empire since 2015.