The ADU Hour w/guest Willie Dean

Willie Dean founded Ground Up Design Works in 2013. He focuses on residential projects with creative and sustainable designs. Willie specializes in ADU design with extensive experience in new construction, as well as garage and basement conversion. With 38 (and counting) built ADUs Willie has experience with a diverse array of people’s housing journeys and is excited to share what he knows about helping them build their backyard dreams.

Kol Peterson: All right. So this is Willie Dean and Willie Dean is a residential designer working primarily doing ADU design and has worked [00:02:00] quite a bit in both Oregon and now in California.  I thought he would be an appropriate guest to have because yeah his experience in both those states.

On top of that, Willie is also an excellent ADU designer. We're going to be talking about ADU design as a general matter. And hopefully everybody can get something out of our conversation. So, Willie why don't I give you a second to introduce yourself in a little bit more detail?

Willie Dean: Sure. My name is Willie Dean. I am an architectural designer in Portland, Oregon. My company is called Ground Up Design Works and I specialize in residential design of all types. But I'd say specifically, probably 80% of my work  is accessory dwelling units here in the Portland area. And over the last few years I had a opportunity to work with a company in South bay, San Jose area and with them, we, we executed probably twelve ADUs in the South Bay, Silicon Valley area.  It's a good amount of [00:03:00] work within a short period of time. But I definitely have some observations about differences, good and bad and  in general.

 I got my master's degree in architecture from the University of Oregon and that's what got me out to Oregon. I'm originally from Wisconsin. I got my undergrad from University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Kol Peterson: So for those who don't know, I actually went to a design school myself and everybody wore black rim glasses.

So is it a requirement that you wear a black rim glasses if you're an architect?

Willie Dean: You know, some people with other colored glasses but it's a standard. These are actually technically navy blue.

Kol Peterson: Navy blue. Okay. I'm color blind. All right. So we're going to dive right into your work in Oregon, California.

So which markets specifically have you worked in ? Well, I should say in Oregon you probably just worked in Portland, correct?

Willie Dean: For ADUs. Yes. I've only done ADUs in Portland. I've done a couple of remodels in Vancouver, I've done a single family house [00:04:00] out in  rural Wasco county. But as far as ADUs are concerned,  actually only the east side.

Kol Peterson: I just point that out to say that I know a lot of people who work in the ADU space in Oregon and when I say Oregon, it's really just Portland because there's not a lot of activity, even  five miles away from where we are in Portland, because the regulations haven't been the same. In any event. So California, which jurisdictions have you worked in?

Willie Dean: So San Jose, Campbell,  Mountain View,  Los Gatos. The interesting thing about that environment is that every few miles you're in a new town, right. And that's pretty different than Portland where we at and sort of the urban growth boundary and the rules are pretty similar for miles in any direction. Whereas down there, I mean, it's a way bigger space. There's way, way more people. And there's all of these little enclaves that all have their own specific zoning rules. So, that's one of the huge differences working down there. You have every town you go to, [00:05:00] you have to learn a whole new set of rules.

And some of them base their rules on the same stuff. And some of them are just different. And then the way that the permitting offices work is always different, too.

Kol Peterson: So tell us about some of the substantial differences between the ADU design work that you've done in these two markets, Portland and the San Jose zone in terms of a number of different things. So process wise, things like Title 24, net zero solar requirements, designing for dry versus wet conditions, culture wise in terms of players, actors and costs.

Willie Dean: Yeah.  I know that there's a new set of rules in California in 2020, and I haven't done anything this year within the context of the new rules. So everything that I'm saying is, is a tiny bit dated in that respect. But my experiences was that the rules in that part of California, where I was working were a little bit more restrictive.  In Portland, you're [00:06:00] allowed to do 800 square feet or 75% of the existing house, whichever is smaller.

And that's just across the board. Down there the lots are a lot bigger and it's based on a FAR, but a normal lot down there is 7,500 square feet and you can only do a 600 square foot ADU. So, for my experience, we could only do single story  one floor, one bedroom, one bath, which if that's the context or the constraints of the project that you're working in and it simplifies things drastically. So it was, I suppose, easier because you didn't have as many tricks that you could pull out of your hat. But also limiting in that, I felt like it's the most expensive housing market in the country and we're limiting it to these one bedroom apartments that we're building where there really is huge, huge, huge opportunities for infill, and we could be doing bigger projects.

From a zoning perspective, it seemed  it was smaller and therefore simpler [00:07:00] projects then into like Title 24, that's just an interesting  different way of doing things. In Oregon, we have the energy code and it's just a part of the design review and there is no third party verification, which I mean on some level is maybe a better thing, that there is third party verification and it makes it, it maybe adds a little bit more rigor to the process, but it also makes it more expensive.

You usually have to work with a specific Title 24 consultants and then you become sort of a middleman.  You're asking somebody else to verify your designs. So it's a little different. And then it's also interesting because while we just have the code here, our code is actually stricter in a lot of ways as well.

So because it doesn't get cold down there,  you can still just do a two by four wall with R- 21 insulation. You do slab on grade construction, you don't have to insulate under the slab. So these are things that outward just like standard [00:08:00] designs in my kit when I went and  we ended up changing a lot of those things, 'cause when I started two by six walls and under slab insulation and all these things that even with the, the added rigor of T 24, weren't necessary because of the climate.

Kol Peterson: What about drive versus wet, that change anything?

Willie Dean:  I still designed it as if it was going to get rained on because it does still rain and when it happens, it's the same . 

I guess one big difference is up here, we have to mitigate for storm water. And down there you don't,  for the most part. If you're in a  low land area where you're not going to have good drainage, then they might specifically single you out  to do something about it, but we weren't putting in dry wells and every single project.   It rains everywhere, but here because it rains so much, we have these onsite water mitigation systems that you don't have to do that down there.

Kol Peterson: Right. Just, as a side note, Portland's  always been a little bit on the bleeding edge of stormwater management and we have a really good  [00:09:00] climate for that. This really light rain that falls a lot of the year, so it can absorb storm water on site. And I've always liked that, but it can't, you can't do that there  as much because of the rainfall patterns.

 So costs talk about  cost-wise some of the differences between the Portland market and the San Jose area.

Willie Dean: Yeah. It's a lot more expensive, it's most expensive housing market in the country and so that just makes everything more expensive.

Because the cost for the people that work down there. It's one of the reasons that I was hired.  I know what I'm doing with ADUs and so the people that I was working with met me, and thought that I was a good fit, but also I didn't live there.

 It was it was hard because people that are living there are already busy working in the housing market  and they were having a hard time finding people because of how busy it is. And then in terms of cost for building, it's just a lot more expensive. And you know, being a designer,  I wasn't bidding and building all of the projects, so I don't have the exact number of where and why, but just if a climate's more expensive than it's going to be more expensive to build [00:10:00] down there.

Kol Peterson:  Just to dive into that, cause I had to figure this theory out for myself, and I'm sure other like economists have written about this, but if you were to go to a Home Depot, a stick, a lumber down, there would be roughly the same cost as a stick of lumber in Oregon as an Alaska as in Florida.

But it's that I'm guessing it's private, primarily the labor costs that escalate significantly.   I would imagine a direct correlation between land values and labor costs and therefore construction costs. How does that mesh with what you had hypothesized about that?

Willie Dean: That's right. I think that it's in the building, not in the material. It's possible that there's a slight increase in material and there's a lot of people from California on the chat here, maybe somebody else that has bought material in both places regularly could answer these questions better than me because I'm primarily drawing the designs.

But I think that that idea that  the labor is for sure the most expensive part, because those people need to be able [00:11:00] to afford to live at least somewhere near there. And even if you're not living in San Jose, but you're living a half hour away, it's still expensive.

 I would assume that it's just a more expensive climate to operate in. Yeah.

Kol Peterson:  Let's get into a more nuanced element of that question I posed. You were one part of an ADU development process, so you might not be able to speak to all of this, but can you talk about some of the cultural differences and I'll give some context for this, my experience in the Portland market, your experience in the Portland market is  we've had the benefit of having this kind of tight knit community of people who kind of all know each other and to some extent, or a lot of people do.

And we've kind of been working in this small cottage industry sector. Cause it's kind of been a slow growing, well, not slow growing, but  it's been a fairly modest number of ADUs being developed in a concentrated geography, but California: different situation, rapid fire, huge explosion of ADU development, so I'm just curious if you could  speak to any [00:12:00] observations you have about the cultural differences of ADU development, professionally speaking in Portland versus the Bay Area.

Willie Dean: Yeah. It's just coming on very fast and very strong in California. I mean, Portland has been a sort of slow burn process where it's been growing, but not exponentially, or maybe not as exponentially and therefore  a lot of us know each other, other, we visit each other's projects when there's tours,  but yet it's still a pretty niche industry.

You're not producing huge numbers of projects every year. Where down there, there's the possibility of like really exponential growth as these huge swaths of land with ranch houses on 7,500 square foot lots that have flat backyards.

 You'd have to do a GIS sort of query to figure it out, but it's a huge percentage of the way that the land is developed down there is, is it's all primed for it. And then when you take, that would be the most high cost housing market. Like the [00:13:00] market forces are strong. I mean, Portland's a popular place to live, but the market forces are way stronger down there.

And therefore that does change people's motivations for, for doing it. That said when I was down there, it was still a lot of people that were looking to downsize and stay in their house. The same flexible space ideas.  It's the most expensive housing market and so if you want your kids to be able to stay there, you might have to build them a house because  they can't rent anything, they can't buy anything. So you're going to pool your money and build an ADU, or it's so expensive for your parents to have an apartment that they're going to move into the ADU in the backyard, and you're going to keep things closer.

So a lot of the forces were very similar. I'm sure there's people building them as rentals, but we still experienced a huge amount of the people were building them for ways to be flexible and accommodate family members or friends. The other part of it is there's not huge incentives the way there have been in Portland.

So I think that who sees [00:14:00] it as an opportunity as a little bit of a different group of people, because in Portland, the way that it's been incentivized for a long time and continues to be, helps open the door to a wider range of people.   It's so expensive to own a house down there and then because there aren't incentives to get you to build an ADU,  you're trending to a little bit more affluent group of people that would be building them in that area versus how they can get done here.

Kol Peterson: Another difference that I've touched on last week with other guests, and I want to talk about with you for a minute here is prefab, modular aid use and also, you know, standardized designs. It's an interesting topic and I've  historically been kind of skeptical of standardized designs and prefab development in general because these companies have not generally gotten a lot of market adoption here in Portland, but I think that is ephemeral in the sense that things are changing with ADUs, they're becoming much more popular now and a lot more jurisdictions. And so [00:15:00] prefab does potentially play a different role or a significant role. Standardized designs might play a different role. And I was hoping you could talk to me about your thoughts about standardized designs in the Portland market versus the California market and prefab  modular to some extent.

Willie Dean: Sure. So  the short answer is I think I alluded to this earlier, we're a niche market still with ADUs,  in particular in Portland, I think it's going to pick up quicker. And then also Portland,  especially inner Portland,  the lot sizes and typography and layout  is very diverse and so it makes it hard to do anything besides a very small standardized design, which most of my experience is a lot of people want to do the biggest thing they can do. And so here, if you're trying to fit the biggest thing you can do into any weird space backyard that you find yourself in, a standard solution is not going to work very well. Where if you had a 300 square foot design, you probably [00:16:00] could still get away with that, but that's not what everybody wants.

In other places my experience down in the south Bay Area, the houses just naturally bigger yards because of the way that they were laid out years ago when they did that. And  there is more flat space. There's definitely Hills. When you get to the perimeters of towns, but down in the basin where San Jose is built, there's not a lot of Hills. And so I think that just from a construction standpoint, places with more homogeneous typography and site layout would lend themselves better to that. And also down there the market, especially prefab and modular, you need a big market to make  factory building houses to make sense.

In that respect, you need a big market share before that can really get traction. Whereas I think standardized designs  could come first because I could have four designs in my pocket that would work in most lots.  It's a more affordable route for me to [00:17:00] give you an option of what we can do a custom design, but we could also do an unbuilt model home idea. It's not the most attractive thing to me as a custom home designer, but if I'm just putting on my market glasses and thinking, how could this work? I think that it'd be more affordable way to get people into the market. That said the design is usually the least expensive part of the equation, anyway. I think as the markets grow and in particular, in places like California, where they had standardized housing development when the neighborhoods were built, that it might be a little easier to implement a plan or a design that would work in   60% of the properties or something like that.

Kol Peterson: Can you give us  a  quick numeric cost range of what you would charge for an average client in Portland for custom detached new construction and ADU without construction administration services, just for the design through the permit?

Willie Dean: It's different every time it depends   I don't have  standardized designs, but  if somebody comes to me and says, I saw this design that you did [00:18:00] before, and I liked it and we want to use it, then obviously that cuts a big chunk out of the schematic design phase.

If we can start with that and modify it to meet the needs. I would say it's anywhere in $8,000 to $15,000. And then if you need to do  a zoning adjustment, so variance ,or there's lots of neighborhoods where a historic review or historical resource is necessary ,  things add cost up above and beyond.

 Kol Peterson: We're going to transition into design best practices.

So I cover ADU design best practices in my book in chapter five. For those of you who want to see my take on this question, but I want to hear from Willie who actually does this day in and day out.  I'm going to share a presentation and Willie's going to walk us through quickly some of the ADU designed best practices that he tries to incorporate.

 Willie Dean: So these are pretty simple.  Access to natural light.  I just think it's hugely important, no matter what you're designing and in particular when you're designing small spaces. Opening up the building, making it so that you can walk around [00:19:00] without flipping light switches and just the access to natural light also means access to views. And connection to the outside is really important because it makes a small space feel bigger and feel,  my opinion, more comfortable.

So these images you can see  a little backyard cabin with eight windows and two skylights. It's got a lot of light coming into it.  This is a  great room in a two-story ADU that we did in Southeast Portland.

And even though it's in a heavily  wooded area, the lights aren't on, and you can totally see what you're doing, you feel a connection to the outside space and  it  makes it feel like a really comfortable space. So access to natural light is probably number one.

 The smaller the space gets the more important these ideas become. So creative storage, just storage in general with ADUs. We're up against square footage, regulations wherever we are and people frequently want to get rid of the storage.

I'm not an advocate of being super materialistic, but I will say that people have stuff and you need a place to put it  For a place to be functional, you really do need storage. And [00:20:00] then in an ADU specifically, these are like some just creative ideas of where you can find extra storage.

So not only closets, but on the left, we have drawers that are built in the stair risers middle. This is a niche space above the door and that's like, so it's a vaulted area. And then outside of that is a flat ceiling, little hallway and little niches just to would have been a void just in a little attic space, but we carved it out to make it storage.

And then on the right you have the classic Harry Potter door. So those spaces are always important and fun and romantic little storage areas, especially if you have kids around.  Built-in storage under a built-in desk. This is a studio ADU that we did.  It's really, really tight, and so having storage pretty much everywhere we could sneak in was important in this one.

Kol Peterson: Incidentally, this is a, how big is this ADU? 200 something, 240.

Willie Dean: It's got a murphy bed, it's got built [00:21:00] in storage.  It's built like a little sailboat.

So the long view is an idea that basically from opening up views through the space and out of the space so that  it's allows you to see through the space. So putting openings in the space and interesting places.so that your eye can go all the way through the building and that makes the building feel bigger. And again, in a little space that just goes a long way and making it feel bigger than it really is. This, this project in particular, people never believe that it's 800 square feet.

Kol Peterson: I want to pause on this one and say, w you know, in this case we have what I'll classify as a catwalk, and maybe there's another word for it. And in Portland, the code , you only count the habitable living space. You can't include that catwalk, but you wouldn't include this vacant space right here that doesn't have a floor.

So in the Portland context, within the planning zoning code, this might even be classified as a best practice because it expands that upper level so much and gives you so much architectural interest, but that might vary depending on how [00:22:00] they classify a square footage in your jurisdiction.

Willie Dean: Correct, yeah. And this is actually a trick I learned from the ADU that's in the background of Kol right there, and then his house call has a pretty sweet catwalk and a big open vaulted space that's pretty great. So interestingly interior spaces, this is another just giving vaulted spaces and sort of dynamic staircases, skylights, dormers, just things that make the space feel unique, go a long way.

Again, you can just imagine if this space was just a regular flat ceiling rectangular room, it would not feel as big and open as it does. And another one that I added was just flipping the plan. So this project and another project, this is, this is an ADU where the bedroom is downstairs.

And then the common area is actually up on the second floor and there's reasons pro and con for this, but what it does. Where you will be hanging out with people and spending time gets tons of daylight,  it feels like Treehouse. You can see much further.  Most of the [00:23:00] time in backyards, if you're on stuck on the ground floor, you're looking into the setback or you're looking 15 feet over to the back of the house.

You can get up 12 feet off the ground. You can actually see out into the neighborhood in a way that's a lot more interesting. 

Kol Peterson: I I'll refer to that as a reverse floor plan. I don't know if that's the right term for it. Flip flopping the floor plan. I'm going to do my next project like that.  There's a lot of rational reasons to do it for the reasons you mentioned a lot more natural light, but it also feels incredibly not normal.

I'm not sure  I'm gonna really like living in it, but I want to try it out. You know what I mean? It's like, you always want to walk into the great room and here, all of a sudden you're walking into the bedroom. You have to go upstairs with your groceries, It seems kind of clunky.

Willie Dean: Yeah. That's the downside is that you walk into like a front hall and then it's a front hall with stairs and you have to always go up the stairs or just walk into a bedroom,

 This is one that's not done that way. I really like using stairs in a dynamic way to accentuate people moving [00:24:00] through the space. It's one of the only places in the building where you are moving in the Z axis, if you will,  so calling that out and making it a fun thing.

So this project is exactly what we were just talking about, the plan is flipped. So the upper right side of the second floor is the kitchen, living, dining.   So that allows us to have the common area it's up in the vault in space, which makes it feel really neat. This project is built on an alley and it looks out over like a great big intersection. So if you're in the backyard, it's really very heavily planted and wooded and fenced, but once you're up on that second floor, you can actually see out and see over to a big intersection in the city and give some like nice dynamic stuff to look at and connections to the bigger area.

Again, we've got built in storage and the bench by the window, sort of a real interesting vaulted ceiling that has a dormer in it. The long view, this one actually is built [00:25:00] on the Willamette Bl uff so this looks out over the trains switching yard and then out to the river and forest park on the other side.

So when you  combine a few of those ideas into one space. It really starts to make the space punch above its weight class, I guess .

Kol Peterson: All right, so one core question I have for you is, if you're working with a homeowner, what information are you seeking from a homeowner to help inform the design for a detached ADU ?

Willie Dean: Usually I just say, what are your goals? A lot of times, people that are ready to hire a designer have a pretty solid idea of what they want and often, just asking one question is enough to get 80% of the information that you're going to need.

Is it going to be owner occupied or rented?  Is a good one to start with. Although I find that even when people design them to be a rental, they usually design it around themselves mentally, just cause that first person design ideas is the way most people are going to do things. How big do they want it to be?

Do they  [00:26:00] understand the zoning and sizing regulations? In Portland in particular, there's sort of two paths you can go, you can 800 square foot. There's still regulations and limits, but, do you want to do a big almost house size ADU or there's you can do these 24 by 24 single story ADUs that you're allowed to build in the setbacks  How important is privacy? Because that sort of gets to some of those ideas with the flipping the plan. 

In general, these are often really, really close to the existing house and the neighbors. How you orient windows, where the views, even though the views and the daylighting is super important, you do need to be sensitive about where windows are looking. Are you looking straight into your next door neighbors bathroom? Things like that. So both how you feel about privacy and then how does the privacy impact the place that you're putting the building? Do you need extra storage? Getting rid of a shed or garage and replacing it with an ADU, so do you need to accommodate that storage? Do you need a garage? You need just some external storage or even be okay [00:27:00] without it? That's sort of a topic, I've  had people that have a full garage and they hadn't thought about that.   

Do you have a particular style in mind?

Cause I can do lots of different styles , I'm pretty flexible.  Also the code, it limits you into a certain level of traditional design, but there's a lot of wiggle room within that now. Again, speaking about Portland in particular.

Do you want it to look just like your house? Do you want it to look like the craftsman across the street, or do you want it to look kind of modern?  What are your interests?

 Then budget conversation.

  Kol Peterson:  Thanks Willie. I have a couple more questions, but I'm going to hold them because I want to see what audience questions there are.

  Kelcy King: That wraps up the interview portion of this episode of the ADU hour. As a reminder, these episodes are the edited audio version of interviews that we conducted via a webinar series. Good news. You can access the full video series  via Kol's website, BuildinganADU.com. Now for the second half of the show I curate [00:28:00] questions from the audience that gives our guests the opportunity to dive deeper into a topic or address new ideas and questions.

   We've had some good ones . First, municipalities are hoping to address  ADA and the accessibility of ADUs.

I'm wondering if you can  address the costs and how those change when you are trying to accommodate the ADA requirements.

Willie Dean:  It's not hugely more expensive to build that way. It's just, it takes more space in general is my experience, and so I guess in so far as  space costs money it can be more expensive, but in an ADU, the idea of the cost per square foot metrics don't really work anyways.

 I like the idea of giving some sort of square footage premium if you're going to build an accessible unit or maybe allowing a little bit bigger footprint, because so in Portland you're allowed to do an 800 square foot ADU, but most lots can only accommodate a 650 square foot footprint.

[00:29:00] So it means to do a full 800 square foot ADU, you have to do a two story building. And obviously that means you can't have an 800 square foot ADA unit on most normal lots. So, doing something to accommodate for the extra space on a single floor and maybe even allowing a little bit of extra square footage beyond the 800.  I would think that those things are more important.

 It's a little bit more expensive to build a curbless shower because it's custom, you can't just buy a fiberglass insert and it's a little bit more expensive to build the cabinetry and the storage and the kitchen in a way that allows for, accessible. So you can't have really high stuff above the counters. Some of the storage, you can't put stuff as high.

And so therefore you need more space down low. I think allowing for more space would be a good solution. Then you got to have  good access.  In a lot of ADUS, you're in a backyard and  you have to go upstairs. So,  there are hurdles, I guess, almost literal hurdles to [00:30:00] getting into certain places that can make it more expensive.

If you have to build an ADA ramp from the street all the way to the backyard,  that could add some fee to the project. 

Building costs are really high right now. So do you need design tips  that can lower the prices and to kind of address that cost?

 One story versus two story is a big one because building the second floor and all of the structure that it takes, That's a big, additional cost.

I would say a big one is  trusses.  If you can come up with a design that you can do with trusses and you can still do vaulted ceilings with trusses.  That's a little bit of a pretty fab solution it's just a prefab roof. In a custom build that can save a lot of money both from the material standpoint and from the labor to put it together.

You know,  I like sort of wacky structural tricks where stuff is  hanging off in a certain direction, but keeping the loads all coming through the walls.  A nice, neat rectangle with a triangle on top, [00:31:00] that's gonna be less expensive  and easier to build and less big engineered pieces to go into it.  Not putting windows right in the corners. Simplifying the structural design. And then window and door packages are usually pretty expensive. And so using affordable windows and doors is a big one.  Siding can be expensive.

  If you have to run a big trench because you're putting the unit really far away from the existing house or the existing sewer lines. So some of that infrastructural stuff that needs to be considered early so that you don't end up having to do weird plumbing gymnastics, or building a sewage ejector pump room . So making sure that you have that worked out at the beginning, is important. And then  simple finishes and you can do simple finishes and still have really beautiful product.   

Keeping affordable materials solutions on the table and not creating design that's predicated on material. So I try to design  so whatever material.  As often, the stuff changes when the clients and contractors get involved and I don't really have a way [00:32:00] to hold their feet to the fire about the material solutions.

The affordable thing gets picked very often. And so trying to make designs that look good, no matter kind of what the material you pick is a important thing. Yeah.

Kelcy King: Thank you. Can you give us an idea of design costs per Oregon and your California experience for 650 square foot.

Willie Dean: Yeah, it's, it's every project's different, so just painting design costs is always tricky.   So design costs, it's going to vary, like, I mean, I'm sure any designers watching this right now are going to say, like, don't say.

I don't say it.  I won't say any specific numbers, but it's like you know, I'm, I'm a one man shop. My overhead's low,  I'm able to keep things affordable for certain reasons. There's other company and it's, that's not to say that you should use a one man shop versus design firm, design firms [00:33:00] have a lot more resources that they can pull from than I do and maybe they can get things done faster or meet higher quality control.

Kol Peterson: Yeah.  I've seen ranges the in the Portland market from like for detached new construction $1,250 to like $20,000. And I'd say the average that I see out there is $8000 to $12,000 for a detached new construction.

But you know, I would imagine it's a little bit more expensive in California maybe, but we'll see.

Willie Dean: My experience in California was a little bit different because most of the work that I did was through a single design build company, so that was all for the whole project. So we didn't break out what the design fees were.  I think Kol's range is pretty accurate.

That low range is definitely if your little brother's doing the design for you and that higher range, I mean, that could be totally normal. It just depends on how many bells and whistles you're looking for in your project.

Kelcy King: I have one more. What municipal regulations do you find to be the most prohibitive?

Willie Dean: Parking's pretty rough.  Adding another car plus a [00:34:00] house is really hard to any single family lot.

Owner occupancy. It's just gonna limit the amount of people that can do it.  Obviously landlords are gonna want to build rental units and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Those are two big ones.

Kelcy King: Do you, do you run into any like exterior feature design regulations that you find prohibitive?

Willie Dean: Yeah. I mean, I think they're all prohibitive.  I'd way rather not have my hands tied, but they're not prohibitive in the respect , it doesn't stop you from getting projects done. So we're able to do really awesome, beautiful work, even within the constraints of the subjective ADU design code that exists.

 Those constraints aren't as bad as like the real poison pill ones.

Kol Peterson: I've got a couple. Willy, I guess I was curious, I, you have done projects other than just detached you construction ,correct?.

You've done garage conversions and you've done basement conversions.

Willie Dean: Yup.

Kol Peterson: Okay. From purely from a design perspective and I want a subjective answer. Are you just as happy doing a garage or basement conversion or do you [00:35:00] prefer detached new construction ?

Willie Dean: I prefer detached new construction because I like designing buildings. You know, a single building from the ground up. But I'm very happy to work on garages and basements and additions and anything else. I guess it's sort of egocentric, but I think a lot of architects would feel that way, that it's more fun to design a whole building.

Kol Peterson: As a policy matter, I think you're right. I think architects probably prefer it and I think builders probably prefer it. And that's why I encourage professionals to focus on the conversions because I think there's so much good work that can be done from a housing perspective.

That's where we can bring costs down,  at least in the Portland market, you know, LA there's a lot of garage conversion specialists, but in the Portland market, there is not. And and I think that's a great niche for more people to consider because a lot of builders don't want to work on conversions and designers don't want to work on conversions either.

So, but thanks, thanks for your answer.

Willie Dean:  I would say that I'm very focused on conversion projects. I know a lot about how to do them. I've [00:36:00] done  a bunch of them. It's just there's a lot more technical weeds that you get into with them. So  it's more complicated and sometimes you don't get to stretch your design chops as much, but I totally agree that that from a housing stock perspective, we really need to be doing.