Empowering dreams, building futures

An Accessory Dwelling Unit is a second, self-contained home on a lot that already has a house. Self-contained is the operative word: it needs its own kitchen, bathroom, sleeping area and entrance.

There are four common shapes: a detached unit in the backyard, a unit attached to the existing house, a converted garage, and a Junior ADU carved out of the house itself. Which ones your lot allows depends on its size, its setbacks and the local rules where you live.

Two clocks run, and they are very different.

Construction has a schedule you can plan around. Once the permit is issued and the crew is on site, the sequence is predictable and we can tell you the week each stage lands.

Permitting is the one that surprises people. The submittal goes to plan check, comes back with corrections, and how many rounds that takes depends on how complete the plan set was going in. It is the single biggest lever on your timeline, and it happens before a shovel touches the ground.

We give you both numbers separately at the quote, so you are not planning around one figure that hides the other.

Square footage is what everyone asks about first, and it is rarely what moves the number the most. The bigger drivers are:

• How far the utilities have to travel. A unit at the back of a deep lot needs longer sewer, water and electrical runs, and sometimes a panel upgrade.
• Site access. If a truck cannot reach the build area, material gets moved by hand and labour hours climb.
• Foundation and grade. A flat, stable pad is cheap. A slope is not.
• Finish level. The same footprint can swing widely depending on what goes inside it.

A garage conversion usually starts lower than a detached build because the slab, the walls and the roof already exist and are already permitted as structure.

In most cases yes, and for many owners the rent is the reason the project pencils out. What varies is the type of rental allowed: long-term versus short-term rules are not the same thing and are not decided at the same level of government.

Before you design around a rental plan, it is worth confirming what your specific address allows. We flag it during the feasibility stage rather than after the plans are drawn, because it can change the layout you want.

Not always, and the exceptions are broader than most owners expect: proximity to transit and the type of unit both matter.

This is one of the first things we check, because parking requirements can eat the same backyard area you wanted to build on. Finding out early is the difference between designing once and designing twice.

We do. Design coordination, the plan set, the submittal, the corrections cycle and the inspections all run through us, and you get told where it stands without having to ask.

You are the owner, so anything that needs your signature comes to you, but chasing plan check is our job, not yours.

For a detached ADU, almost always. The work happens away from the house and the disruption is mostly noise, dust and trucks during working hours.

For an attached unit or a full renovation it depends on what gets touched and for how long, especially if the kitchen, a bathroom or the main panel is out of service. We walk through that with you before the schedule is locked, so nobody discovers it mid-project.

The property address and a rough idea of what you want. That is enough for a first conversation.

To move from an estimate to a number you can plan around, it helps to have any existing plans of the house, the age of the electrical panel, and whether you have had any survey or soils work done. If you do not have those, we find out. It just takes a visit.