Nick and Tecia needed more room. In April of 2022, Tecia was a full-time student studying clinical social work, while Nick was working as an auditor from their property in Paso Robles, California, four days a week. On top of it all, two of their three children were being homeschooled. Finding privacy could feel like a tall order.

When Tecia began her internship, she started making post-grad plans to develop a therapy practice, which, to comply with laws surrounding patient privacy, would call for a space outside their home. So she and Nick started looking at stand-alone units to add to their property for telehealth sessions. “We started by looking at your standard prefab shed without a finished interior or anything like that,” says Nick. “We found a couple that we kind of liked, but then we started asking about pricing and it was just too expensive for what we felt like we were getting.”

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The couple were searching Craigslist for something better when they encountered a rendering of a small ADU with a “Japandi” aesthetic. A phone call led to a site visit with the advertising architect, Timon Phillips, and soon after the couple became the first owners of his ADU design, known as Rööm. “After we met Timon, it didn’t take more than five or ten minutes for my wife to be like, ‘Yeah, let's do it,’” recounts Nick.

The unit Nick and Tecia purchased is the first product from Phillips’s company, Hut Design + Build, founded in San Luis Obispo in 2017. According to Phillips, it’s a modular timber system that allows owners to create a customizable ADU that can expand, shrink, or be relocated as needed.

In its most pared-down version, Rööm is a nine-by-nine-foot timber frame sizable enough to accommodate a simple office setup with a desk and chair. It can be expanded in four- or eight-foot sections, so owners can build at their respective pace and budget. “It’s kind of like adult Legos,” says Nick. Hut’s baseline model costs $25,000, which includes windows, a door, electrical outlets, lighting, and the ground screw foundation piers. Nick and Tecia’s model, which is nine-by-thirteen-feet with a four-foot porch, retails for $35,000.

The company works with owners to orient their unit, select the number of windows, and pick a door system. Owners can add personality by selecting materials for the interchangeable wall and floor grid panels. For their new space, Nick and Tecia chose a Cor-Ten steel facade, plywood walls, generous steel-framed windows, and hardwood floors. The facade’s Cor-Ten panels are “pulled off” the structure to enhance ventilation to the unit’s timber frame, which is critical in Paso Robles, where moisture can build up and temperatures regularly reach more than 100 degrees in the summer. The three large windows open for a breeze. The roof is durable and low maintenance in galvanized metal.

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For Nick and Tecia, through discussions with Phillips about their needs, what started as an 81-square-foot plan became 117 square feet with a porch and an expanded interior to accommodate Tecia’s yoga practice, which she incorporates into therapy sessions. When she isn’t working, she’ll sometimes use the space as a classroom for her kids.

Hut’s standard Rööm model incorporates hemp and wood fiber insulation, and timber harvested from areas ravaged by wildfires. A ground screw foundation, a popular option in Europe, is meant to make it easier to move the structure, if needed. “What sustainability means to me is what’s left behind,” Phillips explains.

If a Rööm owner is moving and wants to take it with them, the company offers a relocation service, although Phillips says disassembling and assembling the structure is simple enough that handy owners can do it themselves. For now, Nick and Tecia are staying put. If or when they need more space, all they have to do is add another Rööm.

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