How Ellery ADU Studio Rialto Was Born in Rialto
We opened this branch in 2015, the same year California rewrote its ADU laws and the permitting backlog turned into the real bottleneck. Nadia Ellery had spent months watching homeowners in San Bernardino County get stranded - designers who drew plans that couldn’t be built, builders who blamed the architect when the city rejected the permit set, and families paying for two sets of drawings because nobody had checked if Rialto’s setback rules matched the state minimum. The moment that stuck was a call from a homeowner near Base Line who had spent eight months and still didn’t have a buildable permit. The designer said the city was being unreasonable. The builder said the drawings were wrong. Both had been paid. Neither would answer the phone. Nadia drove out that afternoon, spread the plans on the kitchen table, and found the conflict in twenty minutes - a garage conversion drawn as a detached unit, which Rialto doesn’t allow on that lot width. The family had been living in limbo because two vendors had a contract that let each blame the other. That night, Nadia wrote down what became this branch’s founding rule: one contract, one price, one person responsible from the first sketch to the final inspection. No more designer-versus-builder. No more “that’s not my department.” We brought Ellery ADU Studio to Rialto because this market needed a design-build studio that treated the permit set as part of the product, not a separate gamble.
Nadia Ellery’s Personal Connection to the ADU Trade
Nadia didn’t start in ADUs. She started in construction documentation - the unglamorous work of turning an architect’s sketches into something a city planner could stamp. For years she sat in plan check meetings in San Bernardino County, watching the same failure repeat: beautiful renderings, unbuildable details, and a homeowner who didn’t find out until month four. The smell of those meetings still sticks with her - dry-erase markers, the paper dust from rolled blueprints, the particular tension of someone realizing their $40,000 design fee bought them a second round of engineering they hadn’t budgeted for.
The shift happened slowly, then all at once. A homeowner in Fontana asked Nadia to recommend a builder who could actually build what she’d drawn. Nadia didn’t have one she trusted. She started showing up on job sites, measuring what got built against what got permitted, learning where the gaps opened up - the bearing wall that wasn’t in the structural set, the window that violated egress once the actual foundation went in. The work felt different from pure design. It was tactile. The smell of fresh lumber and cured concrete. The sound of a level settling on a sill plate. The particular satisfaction of a city inspector finding the documentation already in the file, already matching what was built.
What gets Nadia out of bed now is the same thing that got her into it: the homeowner who walks into the finished unit and says, “This is exactly what the drawing showed.” Not bigger, not smaller, not “close enough.” Exactly. The Haven Standard exists because she got tired of apologizing for an industry that treats “close enough” as acceptable. If she weren’t doing this, she’d probably be back in some city’s plan check department, filing corrections on other people’s mistakes. She’d rather prevent them.
Meet Nadia Ellery - The Person Behind Every Job
Nadia Ellery is the Owner and Founder of Ellery ADU Studio Rialto. She holds the state license required to operate this branch and has built her expertise through years of hands-on work in San Bernardino County permit offices, job sites, and design reviews - not through a weekend certification course. She trained in construction documentation before moving into design-build management, and she personally reviews every permit set before it leaves this office.
What separates Nadia from a corporate franchise technician is simple: her name is on the license, and her phone number is the one that appears when there’s a problem. She lives in the Rialto area, shops at the same grocery stores as her clients, and has a standing rule that every homeowner gets her cell before the job starts. Her hobby is architectural salvage - she’s been known to spend Saturday mornings at ReStore in San Bernardino looking for period hardware that matches a 1950s Rialto bungalow. That same attention to detail shows up in her work. She will not sign off on a finish that she wouldn’t accept in her own home.
Her direct commitment to you: every ADU we design, permit, and build in Rialto carries Nadia’s personal review, and she will answer for the result.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Rialto Homeowners
We operate under The Haven Standard, and we reference it by clause because specifics matter more than sentiment.
Clause 1: Have it in writing. Every ADU job is quoted in writing before it starts - flat price, written scope, written warranty. We learned this the hard way in our early Rialto jobs, watching homeowners get comfortable with verbal estimates that ballooned once the foundation was open. That doesn’t happen here. You sign the scope, we sign the scope, and the price is fixed.
Clause 4: Evidence on every job. We photograph and document what we actually find - the condition of your existing slab, the actual soil compaction, the real dimensions of your garage. These photos go in your file, and you get copies. If a question comes up later, we both have the same evidence.
Clause 5: No surprises. No door upsell, no scope creep, no “while we’re in here.” We once had a Rialto homeowner ask us to add a bathroom mid-build. We wrote it up as a formal change order with its own price and timeline, and she signed it before we touched a pipe. That’s how change happens here - or it doesn’t happen.
Our Credentials
Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. Our branch operates as a state-licensed contractor, carries active insurance and bonding, and has built a strong local reputation across Rialto and the surrounding Inland Empire since opening in 2015. We are independently owned and operated, with Nadia Ellery holding the local license and direct responsibility for all work performed under this branch.
Why this matters for your home: an ADU is a six-figure project that lives on your property for decades. A homeowner hiring someone to work in their yard needs to know that if a worker is injured, if a wall fails, if a permit is rejected, there is a real license holder and a real policy standing behind the job - not a shell company or a post-office box. Nadia Ellery’s license number is on every contract we sign in Rialto. You can verify it. You should verify it.
Rooted in Rialto
This branch serves homeowners from the older neighborhoods near Rialto’s historic downtown to the newer developments pushing toward Fontana and Eastvale. Nadia knows the difference between the lots north of the 210 and the ones south of Base Line - the soil conditions, the setback histories, which planners will flag a height variance and which won’t. We’ve walked permits through Rialto’s Community Development Department enough times to know the staff by face, not just by desk number. Our trucks are parked here at night. Our reputation is built on the jobs our neighbors can see from the street.
Written by Nadia Ellery, Owner at Ellery ADU Studio Rialto, serving Rialto since 2015.