A Svelte ADU Gives a Los Angeles Bungalow Room to Breathe

Just off a busy thoroughfare and a stone’s throw from a major freeway, Maria and Louis Gabriel’s street in Los Angeles’s West Adams district is an island of friendly normalcy—the kind of place where neighbors wave and kids ride their bikes and skateboards until the sun goes down. So when the couple outgrew the 1925 two-bedroom, one-bath bungalow they’d bought in 2010, trading up to a big house in the suburbs was off the table. "This community is so vibrant," says Maria. "We decided to make our home a place we wanted to be in forever."

The couple had a big checklist: Redo the kitchen, add a bathroom, improve the connection to the backyard, and, for some serious extra space, build a back house with a guest suite, an office for Maria, and a hangout area for the family. Though Maria is an architectural designer who owns a project management firm and Louis is a furniture designer, they were happy to hand over the reins to Jason Kerwin, a principal at OKB Architecture, while taking on general contractor duties themselves.