The little house with the funny angles, where the Chandlers live with their two kids and a dog, was once a garage, built in the 1950s in St. Helena, California, in what was once a walnut orchard.

In a way, the space in and around their home, a 500-square-foot, rusty-metal accessory dwelling unit (ADU), is an evolving monument to was-onces and used-to-bes. The fountain used to be planter boxes. The rain screen was once a bunch of stakes in a friend’s vineyard. And the rollers that slide open a storage space in the kitchen? The Chandlers scored those at an estate sale—they were skateboard wheels.

Ryan and Maddie Chandler are the two halves of Chandler Workshop Architects, a firm with a handful of Northern California projects to its name. In 2017, having had their fill of city living, the couple decamped from San Francisco for Ryan’s hometown of St. Helena to be closer to his family and start their firm. They wound up buying a home next to the one that he grew up in, where his mom, Mirja, still lives.

Soon the Chandlers began wresting something fit for human habitation out of a space originally intended for machines. They used the garage’s existing footprint, which spared them the hassle and expense of new sewer hookups and setback requirements. But it meant a much tighter space than the 1,200-square-foot limit for ADUs in California. “Most people don’t know that they could do a lot more with less,” Maddie says.

The look of the ADU flowed from those constraints. Its primary wall has a rakish angle that gives more space to the lofted bedroom and the bathroom. The motif reappears across the property: in the entry fin, the office space across the yard, and the steel wall separating the yards of the ADU from the property’s main house, which Maddie and Ryan rent out to a family. Thanks to the Napa Valley climate, certain features can go outside: A dining table sits under a trellis, and a graveled area, with the right arrangement of chairs around a firepit, yields a sort of living room.

In all, the ADU and landscaping came to $225,850. (Ryan estimates their design fee for the structure would have been between $25,000 and $35,000 and their labor $270,000.) The office, clad in reclaimed metal siding, cost another $35,000. The couple splurged in a few places—the FritsJurgens pivot hinge for the front door, for example—but by doing much of the work themselves, Ryan, an amateur machinist, estimates they saved around $300,000. And that’s to say nothing of what they kept in their pockets by using repurposed materials.

$5,000 Site Work	$2,000 Foundation	$30,000 Structural
$25,000 Wall Finishes	$5,000 Flooring	$20,000 Roofing/Siding
$750 Hardware	$7,000 Electrical	$6,500 Plumbing
$4,200 HVAC	$35,000 Landscaping	$3,000 Kitchen & Bath Fixtures
$1,000 Lighting	$18,000 Cabinetry	$1,400 Countertops
$6,000 Appliances	$5,000 Windows & Glazing	$5,500 Doors
$2,000 Millwork	$8,500 Metalwork	$5,500 Furnishings & Decor
$5,500 Permitting	$20,000 Labor	$2,500 Demolition
$1,500 Waste Removal
Grand Total: $225,850

“A well-designed room can be smaller than you think. People do these huge rooms, and the only thing you can do is fill them up.”
—Ryan Chandler, architect and Resident

That was an aesthetic choice and a governing ethic. Across the yard from the ADU, in a cluttered workshop that used to be a barn, Ryan gestures to a sign that reads, It’s Not Hoarding If Your Shit Is Cool. “My motto,” he says. He and Maddie are standing next to a mechanic’s lift, on which sits, preening, a slick old Datsun 240Z, which is about as cool as shit gets.

“I have a lot of toys,” Ryan goes on, “but they’re all vintage. And I think it’s like our house. It’s all rusty and reclaimed.” What it’s all about in either case, he says, is “keeping these things alive.”

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: ChandlerWorkshop Architects Inc.

Structural Engineering: Williams Associates Engineering

Cabinetry: Spring Mountain Case Co.

Landscaping: ChandlerWorkshop Architects Inc.

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