La Mesa Detached ADU

This one is a detached ADU in La Mesa, built as a second home on the property to be rented out: one bedroom, one bath, a living room, a full kitchen, laundry, and its own heating and cooling. Everything a house has, because that is what it has to be — a tenant lives here full time, not a guest for a weekend.

The kitchen is the part people don't expect in a rental this size. Sage-green flat-panel cabinets run to the ceiling on both walls, with butcher block counters and brass pulls — a full kitchen, not a kitchenette. The block continues past the cabinets into a bar top with seating for four, cut from one slab so there's no seam at the corner. Behind the range, marble-look tile runs in large panels instead of small squares, which means far less grout to keep clean. Full-height cabinets on either side of the refrigerator take the pantry storage, because in a build this size the vertical space is the storage.

We left the wall above the kitchen counter open to the living room. The unit sits on a hillside, and that one decision carries the canyon view from the sink all the way to the front door — the difference between a small place that feels small and a small place that doesn't.

The bath is a full one: a charcoal vanity with a quartz top, and a walk-in shower behind frameless glass with marble-look porcelain floor to ceiling, a recessed niche, and a river-rock pebble floor. It was waterproofed properly before a single tile went on.

The bedroom takes windows on two walls, with laundry in its own closet right beside it. Ductless mini-splits handle heating and cooling — no ductwork to route through a build this size, and the bedroom sets its own temperature independent of the living room.

Big job, one point of contact, and a price we set up front and held to.