Meet the Woodland Hills Team Behind Seedling ADU Woodland Hills
When you build an ADU in Woodland Hills, you’re not handing your backyard to a faceless crew. You’re getting a small, steady team that shows up in uniform, covers your floors, and answers questions in plain English. Our crew has built garage conversions off Topanga Canyon, additions on flat lots north of Ventura Boulevard, and ADUs tucked into hillside parcels where drainage matters more than most people expect. They know the inspection quirks of Los Angeles County, the soil movement in the western Valley, and what it takes to keep neighbors calm during a six-month build. Ben Ortega, Owner, put this team together one hiring decision at a time, and he works alongside them on active projects throughout Woodland Hills, Calabasas, and Winnetka.
Our People
Marcus T., Lead Technician, Garage Conversions and Structural Work
Marcus has spent fourteen years in residential construction across Southern California, with the last six focused almost entirely on converted garages and attached ADUs. He holds a current California general building contractor’s license and carries an OSHA 30 certification for job-site safety. If your Woodland Hills garage has a slab that slopes toward the alley or a roofline that doesn’t match the house, Marcus is the one measuring, shimming, and calling out fixes before they become change orders. He lives in Canoga Park with a rescue greyhound named Biscuit, and on most Saturday mornings you’ll find him at the Topanga Vintage Market looking for mid-century lamp parts.
Elena R., Senior Installer, Prefab and Modular ADU Specialist
Elena joined Seedling after five years with a modular home installer in Sacramento, where she learned the exact tolerances that Abodu, Cover, and Boxabl units demand on site. She is certified in James Hardie siding installation and has completed manufacturer training with Plant Prefab and Mighty Buildings, which means she catches fit issues before the crane ever shows up. Her specialty is lot prep: verifying pad compaction, fall protection around the placement zone, and making sure the unit lands plumb on the first set. Elena is fluent in Spanish, keeps a spiral notebook full of hand-drawn grading sketches, and grows more tomatoes on her Winnetka apartment balcony than seems physically possible.
Dana K., Service Coordinator, Your Point of Contact Throughout the Build
Dana is the voice on the phone when you call (559) 249-3776, and she’s the person tracking your permit status, inspection schedule, and material deliveries from first walkthrough to final sign-off. She came to Seedling from a custom cabinet shop in the Valley, so she understands lead times, backorders, and the art of re-sequencing a job without stalling the crew. Dana keeps a shared photo log of every project, including the clean-up photos we send before the crew leaves, and she’s known for returning calls within the hour. She lives in Woodland Hills, drives a 2008 Subaru with 190,000 miles on it, and proofreads every written estimate twice before you see it.
Tommy P., Apprentice, Site Prep and Finish Work
Tommy is the youngest member of the team and the reason shoe covers go on properly, drop cloths get taped at the edges, and tools come off the job site quietly when a client’s kids are napping. He started with Seedling two years ago after a stint in residential painting, and he’s currently working toward his own contractor’s license with Marcus as his mentor. Tommy handles a lot of the finish-phase work: caulking, touch-up paint, hardware installation, and the walk-around inspection with homeowners to catch anything that looks off. He’s an L.A. native, an occasional open-mic guitarist, and the one who triple-checks that the gate is latched before the crew drives away.
One Standard, Every Job
Seedling ADU Woodland Hills is an independently owned member of the Cedarwell family of companies, and the Cedarwell Care Promise is the operating standard our crew works to every single day. That means shoe covers and drop cloths protect your floors from the first hammer swing to the final hardware install. It means we use pet-safe products wherever there’s a choice between options, and we send you a photo of the clean-up before the crew pulls out of the driveway. It means the phone gets answered by a live person, any hour, throughout your project. On ADU builds near bedrooms, we stage noisy work for mid-morning windows and keep equipment quiet during school hours whenever the schedule allows. The 365-Day Done Right Promise applies to every job we build in Woodland Hills, and the team that showed up on day one is the team that comes back if anything needs correcting. We write the price before work starts, we honor it in writing, and we don’t leave until the site is clean and the work is right. That’s not a corporate policy to us. It’s how Ben, Marcus, Elena, Dana, and Tommy run a job site, together, every week.
Written by Ben Ortega, Owner at Seedling ADU Woodland Hills, serving Woodland Hills and the surrounding San Fernando Valley.
