How Ellery ADU Studio Moreno Valley Was Born in Moreno Valley
We remember the exact afternoon in 2015 when we knew Moreno Valley needed something different. Nadia Ellery was standing in a driveway off Frederick Street, watching a homeowner argue with a contractor who had just added $34,000 to an ADU quote halfway through foundation work. The drawings didn’t match the permit set. The builder blamed the architect. The architect was already paid and gone. The homeowner, a retired teacher who had saved for six years, was crying in her garage.
Nadia had spent the previous three years working in the design-build world, and what she saw that day wasn’t unusual. It was standard. California’s ADU law had just changed, and the gold rush was on. Permitting queues stretched to eight months. Contractors were taking deposits for drawings they’d never deliver. The actual product wasn’t the build anymore; it was the permit itself, and nobody was treating it that way.
She called us that night. Not to start a company, she said, but to fix this one broken thing in Moreno Valley. One contract. One price. One person who couldn’t blame anyone else. Ellery ADU Studio opened its Moreno Valley branch six weeks later, and that retired teacher became our first written estimate under what we now call Clause 1 of the Haven Standard.
Nadia Ellery’s Personal Connection to the ADU Trade
Nadia didn’t grow up swinging a hammer. She grew up watching her mother navigate permits for a food truck in Riverside County, learning that the paperwork was the real job and the cooking was just the part people saw. The smell of diesel and propane, the sound of a generator firing at 5 a.m., the way her mother would spread blueprints across a folding table and trace lines with a fingernail - that’s what Nadia remembers. The permit was the product. Everything else followed.
She studied architecture at Cal Poly Pomona, but the classroom felt wrong. Too slow, too theoretical. She dropped out in her third year and took a job drafting garage conversions for a design-build firm in Ontario. The first time she walked a job site in Perris, the foreman handed her a respirator and said, “Your drawings don’t work here. The soil’s different. Show up or don’t bother.” She showed up. The clay soil in that part of Riverside County swells differently than the sandy loam near the coast. Her foundation detail failed. She redrew it in the truck, hand-shaking, dust in her throat, and that night she slept in the parking lot because she couldn’t face driving back without understanding why.
That was over ten years ago. What gets Nadia out of bed now isn’t the framing or the finishes. It’s the moment in a consultation when a homeowner realizes an ADU isn’t just possible, it’s predictable. The flat price. The written scope. The permit tracker they can check themselves. She keeps a folder of every permit approval letter she’s received since 2015, rubber-banded by year, in a filing cabinet behind her desk. If she weren’t doing this, she’d probably be teaching permit navigation at a community college, or she’d have failed at that too and found something else to fix.
The work means something personal because an ADU is never just square footage. It’s a mother moving back in. It’s rental income that makes the mortgage possible. It’s a decision people lose sleep over, and Nadia has lost sleep over enough of them to know the weight.
Meet Nadia Ellery - The Person Behind Every Job
Nadia Ellery, Owner & Founder, Ellery ADU Studio Moreno Valley
Nadia leads every consultation personally and reviews every permit set before submission. Her training spans architectural drafting, California Title 24 energy compliance, and the specific zoning overlays that govern ADUs across Riverside County’s unincorporated areas and its twelve distinct municipal codes. She holds the state license required for the work performed under our name, and every pro working under that name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires.
What separates Nadia from a corporate franchise technician is simple: she signs her name. Not metaphorically. Her actual signature appears on every permit application, every written estimate, every Haven Standard checklist. She lives in Moreno Valley, in a 1964 ranch near the Box Springs foothills, and she gardens badly but persistently. Her tomatoes fail every June. She keeps planting them.
Her commitment to you is direct: if she wouldn’t build it in her own backyard, she won’t build it in yours.
Our Promise to Moreno Valley Homeowners
Our values aren’t posters on a wall. They’re policies with numbers.
Honest pricing. We name the price range on the page, in dollars, because Clause 1 of the Haven Standard requires a flat, written price before anyone starts. In 2016, a homeowner in Grand Terrace showed us a competitor’s quote that listed “foundation work - TBD.” We wrote her a fixed number for the same scope. She still has that estimate, she told us last year, framed in her ADU kitchen.
Quality parts and verified crews. We specify the materials by brand - James Hardie siding where moisture matters, Dvele and Cover and Abodu systems where their prefab efficiencies fit the lot and the budget - and we document what we actually installed. Photos. Model numbers. Warranty cards scanned to your folder.
Standing behind every job. The Haven Standard’s Clause 5 is “No surprises,” and that includes after we leave. If something we built doesn’t match the drawings, we fix it. Not because it’s good business. Because Nadia’s signature is on the permit, and she has to live in this town.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed for the scope of work we perform
- Insured & bonded for homeowner protection
- Years of local experience in Moreno Valley and surrounding Riverside County markets
- Strong local reputation built project by project since this branch opened
These credentials matter because an ADU is a six-figure decision made inside your property line. State licensing means someone independent has verified our qualifications. Insurance and bonding mean if something goes wrong, you’re not pursuing a personal debt. Local experience means we’ve navigated Moreno Valley’s specific zoning, its hillside overlay districts, its flood zones near the Santa Ana River wash, and its relationship with Riverside County’s building department. We know which plans examiners ask for structural calcs upfront and which ones flag them later. That knowledge saves months.
Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires, and we verify it before they step onto your property.
Rooted in Moreno Valley
This branch lives here. Nadia drives the same streets you do, from the newer developments near Alessandro Boulevard to the older stock around Sunnymead Ranch, and she knows which neighborhoods have the 1950s lots that barely qualify for setback relief and which ones have the side yards that make detached ADUs straightforward. We’ve pulled permits at Riverside County’s office on Lemon Street enough times to know the parking situation and the best hour to arrive.
We serve homeowners across Moreno Valley, Redlands, Perris, Grand Terrace, Riverside, Colton, Yucaipa, Highland, Beaumont, San Bernardino, Menifee, and Rialto. The standards we work to come from Ellery ADU Studio. The trucks, the license, and the neighbor you wave to are local.
Written by Nadia Ellery, Owner at Ellery ADU Studio Moreno Valley, serving Moreno Valley and surrounding communities since 2015.