Chapotraphouse

for real. legitimately the biggest pain in the ass is hauling away the unusable, but it looks like it was incredibly halfassed originally/last time and just looking will twist an ankle.

i've done some hardscaping (screeding aggregate, pavers + polymeric, dry laid stone masonry, etc) with/for friends and even had formal training the theory of how to get it right on different soil types. but a fuckload can be gleaned from youtube vids where they show all the steps and prep. i think it's one of the most rewarding types of labor once it's all done and usable, but it's no joke effort moving blocks around haha. and getting that first stone laid exactly true takes forever.

i've never done it "professionally" (for pay), but everybody always said you can charge out the ass for your time. once i get my own forever place with an outside area, i'm gonna do like one hardscape project every summer until the place is a goddamn palace.

10 years and twenty billion dollars overbudget they finally break ground on the steps

I don't think this is a good critique from a leftist point of view. Government projects in the west tend to be overexpensive since everything has to be contracted out to the free market on ideological grounds instead of just employing some people who do things like this at the next highest level where the centralization makes sense (i.e. the town of 300 probably does not need a dedicated team of builders). In the US I think there's some dumb bullshit about sourcing MURRICAN made for some things, too.

After that usually most of the price tends to be because public infrastructure needs to be built to a lot higher standards both as per expected usage but also things like disability and public safety stuff. Ideally you also pay the contracted workers an actual wage instead of near indentured servitude, if only for that contract and you also need to make sure the actual act of building does not include storing a block of bricks on the road like you might on your driveway so a car doesn't run into it, things of that nature.

This picture to me seems much more like "7bicycles said he's done some steps in his garden let's just pay him $3,000 for the stairs"