How Ellery ADU Studio Torrance Was Born in Torrance
We remember the exact afternoon in late 2015 when we knew Torrance needed something different. Nadia Ellery was sitting in a kitchen on Newton Street, talking with a homeowner who had already paid one contractor for drawings, another for a permit expediter, and was now staring at a third invoice for “revisions” that were actually corrections the first two should have caught. The backyard was torn up. The neighbor’s fence was leaning where it shouldn’t be. The homeowner’s mother, who was supposed to move into the ADU by fall, was still in a guest room in Reseda.
The problem wasn’t the ADU itself. The problem was the gap. Designer blamed builder. Builder blamed the city. The homeowner paid for every finger-pointed hour. Nadia walked out of that house and called the parent brand that same evening. Ellery ADU Studio was already operating in other California markets, built on the idea that the permit set and the build belong to the same contract with the same flat price. Torrance had the housing pressure, the aging stock, the homeowners who bought high and needed options. What Torrance didn’t have was a local branch that would put that in writing before anyone picked up a hammer. We opened our doors in Torrance in 2015, and that kitchen on Newton Street is still the story we tell every new hire.
Nadia Ellery’s Personal Connection to the ADU Trade
Nadia didn’t start in ADUs. She started in the space between things, in the parts of a house that most people don’t notice until they fail. For ten years before 2015, she worked alongside tradesmen who taught her to read a foundation pour the way other people read faces, to hear the wrong note in a compressor’s hum, to smell the particular sweetness of a California sill plate starting to rot where the fog rolls in heavy off the Pacific. That sensory vocabulary, the accumulated texture of a decade, is what she brought to Ellery when the brand expanded to Torrance.
The personal shift happened gradually, then all at once. She was helping a friend in Old Torrance convert a garage for her father, a retired machinist who couldn’t manage the stairs in the main house anymore. The friend had quotes ranging from $80,000 to $190,000 for what was essentially the same scope. One contractor wouldn’t even itemize. Another wanted 40% upfront with no permit in hand. Nadia spent three weekends in that garage, measuring twice, drawing by hand, walking the permit application into City Hall herself. When the father moved in, he brought his own tools and built a small workbench against the north wall. Nadia stood in the doorway and watched him plane a piece of redwood he’d salvaged from a jobsite decades before. The smell of it, the oil and the sawdust, mixed with the jasmine that grows wild along the alley behind Crenshaw.
That’s the moment she describes when people ask why ADUs. Not the housing policy, not the investment return, not the square footage added to a property record. The workbench. The jasmine. The fact that a person gets to stay in their neighborhood, in their rhythm, because someone bothered to do the paperwork right and charge a price that didn’t require a second mortgage. If Nadia weren’t doing this, she’d probably be restoring old boats in San Pedro, working with her hands in a different medium, still chasing that same feeling of making something fit a specific life.
Meet Nadia Ellery - The Person Behind Every Job
Nadia Ellery is the Owner and Founder of Ellery ADU Studio Torrance. She holds a California contractor license and has completed the brand’s full training in Haven documentation, flat-price contracting, and the California Building Code as it applies to accessory dwelling units. Before joining Ellery in 2015, she spent a decade in residential construction and repair across the South Bay, from foundation work to finish carpentry.
What distinguishes Nadia from a corporate technician is the same thing that distinguishes her from a generalist: she will not take a job she cannot document. Every homeowner receives a written scope, a fixed price, and a photo record of existing conditions before work begins. She runs early mornings, usually along the Esplanade in Redondo Beach before the cyclists crowd the path, and she brings that same steady pace to project timelines. No rush, no theater, just the work done to the drawings.
Her direct commitment to every customer: if your ADU is not permitted, built, and finished to the drawings, she will make it right. That’s not a slogan. It’s Haven Clause 1, and she signs it on every contract.
Our Promise to Torrance Homeowners
We operate under the Haven Standard, and we mean it literally. Have it in writing means your price is flat, your scope is itemized, and your warranty is printed before anyone starts. We learned this the hard way in 2016, when a supplier delay on a Torrance job would have cost a homeowner three weeks of rent they were counting on. Because we had the written schedule and the written penalty clause, we absorbed the cost, not them. Arrive on schedule means a real window, not “sometime Tuesday,” and a text when the crew is actually en route. Verified crews means license numbers you can check, insurance you can verify, background checks completed before anyone crosses your threshold. Evidence on every job means photos of what we found, not just what we fixed. No surprises means no door upsell, no “while we’re in here” expansion, no invoice that doesn’t match the written estimate.
These aren’t values we aspire to. They’re requirements we enforce, with documentation, on every job in Torrance, Redondo Beach, Gardena, Carson, Hawthorne, San Pedro, Compton, Inglewood, Westchester, Playa del Rey, Lynwood, and Long Beach.
Our Credentials
State-licensed - Every professional working under our name is required to hold the California contractor license their trade requires. You can verify any license number through the Contractors State License Board.
Insured & bonded - Coverage is maintained at the levels required for residential construction in Los Angeles County. We provide certificates of insurance on request.
Years of local experience - Nadia Ellery has worked in the South Bay construction trades since before Ellery ADU Studio opened this branch in 2015. The combined expertise of our local team covers the full ADU lifecycle, from feasibility study through final inspection.
Strong local reputation - We are known in Torrance for flat-price contracts that don’t change, permit sets that pass the first time, and crews who clean up before they leave. We do not claim a review count or star rating we cannot produce on request.
Why this matters to you: an ADU is a year-long relationship and a six-figure decision. You are letting people into your property, your finances, and your family’s living situation. Credentials are the minimum proof that we understand the weight of that. The Haven Standard is the proof that we have built systems to protect it.
Rooted in Torrance
We’re the branch that opened in 2015, not the brand that started then, and that distinction matters to us. We know which Torrance blocks have the clay soil that shifts foundations, which ones flood in heavy January rains, where the city will require a retaining wall and where they won’t. We’ve pulled permits at the Torrance Community Development Department enough times to know the reviewers by face, not just by desk. Our crews live in the South Bay. They buy breakfast at the same delis our customers do. When we say we’re local, we mean our trucks are parked here overnight, our kids go to school here, and if we do bad work, we’ll see you at the grocery store. That’s the accountability that no national marketing budget can buy.
We serve Torrance, Redondo Beach, Gardena, Carson, Hawthorne, San Pedro, Compton, Inglewood, Westchester, Playa del Rey, Lynwood, and Long Beach. Call (424) 344-4822 to schedule your free estimate.
Written by Nadia Ellery, Owner at Ellery ADU Studio Torrance, serving Torrance and the South Bay since 2015.