Michael Urban has always been a bit of technophile.

When he and husband Dean Anes moved into a 1947 stucco home in the historic Franklin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, he noticed there was a lot of unusable space in the property’s hillside yard—and saw an opportunity to embark on a project that was part-technology, part-design.

Michael, who is a screenwriter and teacher, had recently stumbled upon an article about Los Angeles-based startup Cover, a backyard home/ADU company that promised to streamline every step of the home-building process—from design and permitting, to manufacturing and installation.

“This was a very big fun gadget for me,” says Michael. “We figured when we moved in that this is something that we were 10 to 15 years away from building, and it just started happening much, much faster than that.”

The couple knew first and foremost that they wanted to keep the ADU feeling separate from the main property, but, from there, imagined a variety of use cases for the addition: an art gallery for Dean; a space for aging parents or visiting friends and family; or even temporary lodging for the 2028 Summer Olympics.

“We wanted people who were staying here in the ADU to really feel like they were in their own residence, and that’s why it is completely separate,” Michael says. “It has its own parking garage, people can come and go, and they don't need to feel like there’s somebody observing them.”

In addition to the Wolf Sub-Zero appliances, and fixtures and finishes that come standard with a Cover home, Michael and Dean chose to install Level Home smart locks to further their guests’ sense of autonomy and their own technology-forward thinking.

“It’s not a bulky box that goes on top of the lock or anything like that,” says Michael. “And the fact that you can open it with an app or with your finger while you're carrying other things coming and going, it’s incredibly useful.”

The ADU has all the same features of a full-size home in a small, panelized package. After a brief site survey with Cover, Michael and Dean received 3D visualizations that they further customized before locking in a price at just under $146,000. Michael says there was quite a bit of work to prepare the foundation and a retention wall for the unit, but, after that, it was built in three weeks.

“They craned all the pieces in and assembled it and, before you knew it, it was a house,” says Michael.

While the original stucco home has three bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, and is approximately 1,500 square feet, the ADU adds one bedroom, one bathroom, and an additional 450 square feet.

“It’s a very interesting building typology because it’s able to create a higher density in established neighborhoods,” says Cover’s design lead, Thomas Heyer. “And for us as a company, it allows us to iterate on the product because it’s relatively small and really perfect the product before scaling up.”

Michael and Dean are currently renting out the space to a long-term renter, and have found good things do indeed come in small packages in both the ADU and its smart locks.

“To be able to give someone a digital key with the Level Home product, it is a total game changer. You don’t have to worry about when people are arriving or leaving a key under the mat or anything like that,” says Michael. “You make those arrangements in advance and your guests are independent.” Just as they planned.

Learn more at level.co

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