Tag: adu

In Part 1 of this series about the conversion of my detached garage into an accessory dwelling unit (ADU), I discussed the structural issues related to the roof of the garage. In this Part 2, I will discuss structural issues relating to the walls of the garage and how I dealt with them.

The existing detached garage that I used to build my accessory dwelling unit (ADU, or commonly known as in-laws unit) was constructed in the 1940s. Since the garage is advanced in its age, it has its share of structural issues that need to be resolved in order to turn it into a code complying livable space. In this post and future posts, I will break down some of the structural issues I encountered in this ADU project and how I fixed them. This post (Part 1) will focus on the roof of the structure. Future posts will focus on other structural elements such as the walls and foundation of the ADU.

To help solve its housing crisis, California has recently made changes to its state laws to make it easier and cheaper to build ADUs. The new laws are numerous and confusing, so in this post I will summarize them in a chronological fashion so you can see all the important changes in one post. For each new law I will provide you with the official law link and a brief summary of what the important changes are. I will also have some commentaries (in italic) regarding the laws that were effective in 2017 and how they helped me build my ADU. Keep in mind that recent laws have made it even easier and cheaper now to build an ADU then when I built mine!

Believe it or not, the most time consuming part of this whole ADU journey was not the construction, but rather getting through the permitting process with the county (I live in an unincorporated area so I had to deal with a county instead of a city). Even though the whole permitting process was not particularly pleasant, I’m glad I went through it and will go over the reasons why later in this post. To be fair, the whole permitting process was painful and confusing for me mainly because I wasn’t familiar with the whole process and didn’t know what to expect. Hopefully this post will help you navigate the ADU permitting process a little bit better than I did.

Do you want to put your engineering skill sets to work outside of your regular 8 to 5 engineering job? No, I’m not talking about getting another job, but rather using your engineering know how to do some construction on your property to increase your property values and cash flow. I’m currently building an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU or commonly known as in-law unit) in my backyard and I will be documenting my journey on this blog from permitting all the way to end of construction so you can learn from my experience and apply it to your current or future property.