u/Newbie10011001

I'm getting bids to build this single family home in Miami.

It's raised 8ft, the single habitable floor you can see is 3,000 sq ft

Bedrock is 2ft below

Site is easy to access. I don't want a perfect finish, nor board formed, just something passable.

The shell costs I'm getting are very varied

I've used AI to turn the drawings into this image, it's slightly wrong because ALL interior walls are to be CMU. Only the structural shell is cast in place reinforced concrete.

If you had to pick a cost for this, what would you say ballpark?

200k?
300k?
400K
500k?
600k?
700k?
800k?
900k?

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So I'm trying to get quotes for a home I've designed with an architect and want to build and the entire industry seems obsessed with cost per sq ft.

When it seems to me:

Lot’s of things are almost entirely detached from House Size.

• Cost of connecting to utilities.
• Soil tests
• Driveways 
• Permit fees
• Basic landscaping , site clearance
• Kitchen and primary bathroom fixtures/appliances
• External doors

There is almost a minimum cost to build a home of like $200k, even if the house was 100 sq ft.

Vast numbers of things seem correlated but fairly loosely

Like a bigger house will perhaps have more bathrooms, and perhaps more glazing but not necessarily

 - Design fees

• HVAC costs
• Glazing costs
• Plumbing 
• Electrical fitout
• Bathroom fittings.

And then lots of things should impact the cost a MASSIVE amount, but don’t come over in the sq ft, like floor to ceiling heights, or Window types or Smart home elements , having a roof terrance or a pool, whether you use Teak or grass around the pool. Etc 

The reason I ask is I’m trying to get quotes for a 3,000 sq ft house to build which I’m basically designing as a minimum viable house. The floors are concrete, the kitchen is from IKEA, the walk in wardrobes are shells, the windows are small, the design has always been routed in making plumbing and AC simple. ( although it is made from concrete)

And most quotes I’m getting back are expensive on the basis that it’s a big house, and seem to forget that I’m choosing $100 interior doors not $1000. Or $100 toilets not $500.

This is in Miami where there is a sense that it’s impossible to make a house now for less than $500 psqft,  which seems absurd to me. I don't think you could ever build a 1,200 ft house for $600k, but it doesn't seem hard to make a 4,000 sq ft house for $2m, unless you ASSUME it has Italian cabinetry.

In order to value engineer it to fit budget there is this advice that I should make each room smaller, but I almost can’t see how this would much MUCH of a difference,  making each bathroom 2ft less in one direction changes a tiny amount of the cost of the room. 

It seems to me like using cost per sq ft is madness as ANY rule of thumb for estimating costs.

It seems to me the real estimate is a fixed cost to build anything + ( costs based on number of rooms x level of finish )

I'm in the process of trying to build a house on some land I own

One of the GCs has come back with a cost-plus approach, which is great because I like the transparency of it all.

I noticed on the 600 line itemized price tag, almost every single Item that I can easily check the price of online, seems way higher

We're talking about Water heaters that on Amazon are $1200 and are shown as $5000.
Random Toilet paper holders for $100 each, when clearly you can buy one for $20
Not specifically labeled "washer dryer" units are $3500, when you can get easily for $1200
A "200-Amp Siemens Main Breaker Load Center" is labelled as $2,300, when they are online for $300

Yeah, the good thing about this is clearly they're being transparent about stuff and not trying to get something over on me.

But what's going on?

- Are the prices that they're saying likely to be quite accurate because everything needs to be installed, and that cost isn't included?
- Is it just expected that I go through line by line and bring them back to reality?
- Is this just a way to create a reservoir of cash so they can actually include other things that I can't see, Because they can't be bothered to label everything?

I'm kinda surprised because this entire process, I've had three quotes so far for a house in Miami and one is THREE times more than the other and this is in the middle.

They are also saying "Project management and supervision " for $250k but also add in $250k for the "cost plus", surely this is double dipping?

I am a dad to a fantastic 10-month-old boy.

I'm amazed how many moments there are every day that I wish I had recorded as photos or videos. Things like first steps, first pointing, etc.

And I'm amazed at how quickly these moments are passing

We have always been incredibly careful with trying to use devices as little as possible around him.

But somehow he's completely obsessed with smartphones, google home, Apple Watches, Laptops.

So the moment that we bring out a smartphone to record him, he gets obsessed, and changes how he is. He'll either run after it, or cry if we take it away, or the very best outcome is he's fine, but looks distracted.

I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations on good cameras that we could use

- I want it to be small so he can't see it,
- Good quality.
- Something I can wear, I'm guessing a lapel or glasses.

Or am I going about this all wrong, and there's a way to use phones without him changing? I feel like this is something that lots of parents should go through, but I've never heard of it

I'm trying to submit documents to get a single-family home construction permitted.

I've got a TINY amount of work for a civil engineer to do. It's basically to mark drainage swales , and connections to utilities.

The companies I've asked so far have come back with insane quotes ( like close to the architect who spend a year designing the entire house)

If anyone knows anyone good that can do this, please let me know.

Would be good as a side gig for someone

Thanks

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I signed up to Chipdrop to get free logs or mulch.

In my mind a log, is something you put on a fire. i.e that you can carry.

Turns out, someone can just drop 10ft long x 2 ft long tree pieces and call that logs.

So here I am with 15 cu yards of wood, ( soft pine) that I can't possibly move myself.

Some pieces are about 12 inches in diameter, some are 24 inch at the widest.

I got quotes to chop it up of $400 ( this is Miami in 2026) . So now I'm wondering about renting a chain saw and doing myself.

1. I'm 6'2, quite strong, and not an idiot, with average strength and skills.
2. I don't need to turn the wood into a carved swan, I need to just make the very very most simple cuts through to make it 1ft chunks.

My question is: am I being an idiot and thinking I can rent a chainsaw and do this?
Will it be dangerous for me to attempt?
It would take me a lot longer than I expected to?

Will I need to sharpen the chain while doing, which I'm not going to do.

Will a rented chainsaw be crap.

I like learning, I like doing things, so it's less about the money and more about the challenge, but my wife will kill be again if I die doing it.

Is it just me, or is the general impact of AI something that is ruining everything.

My social media feeds are completely full of AI-generated crap.

The endless AI companies seem excited about making everything bland but free. Boring but cheap. How can we automate things that people like doing. How can we make anyone cheat. It all seems nasty and tasteless.

As someone with a large audience on most social media platforms, almost all of my posts die, because I have to compete with AI slop at scale.

Sites like Pinterest are now a complete waste of time, because the whole point of it was that stuff was inspiring because it was real

Whether it's fake news, AI written articles, or fake images, it's all just time wasting and shit.

My inbox is completely full of AI-generated sales messages. So now I can't find the stuff that actually matters. None of my clients ever reply to my emails anymore

It's not just me, everyone just seems completely bored of it all. It's like we've created this sense of mass apathy. We've got algothms stripping the joy out of everything.

Everything seems optimized, but empty.

Everyone seems scared of it taking over their job at the same time as finding it useless

Everyone young doesn't really know what to study, because it all seems like a complete waste of time

Everyone I know in business doesn't really make any decisions anymore, because they're just hanging on , because either they're worried about losing their job, or there just seems to be too much news for them to read

One has to ask, is there really ANYONE that is glad that any of this stuff exits?

I've spent my whole life loving technology.

I have built a career on understanding how technology changes the world

I always think technology is a lever to humanity. It's what allows us to make remarkable things happen

But everything to do with AI and how it's currently used seems detrimental to everything that matters.

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We've got an amazing 16 month (fixed male) old KCCS.

We never noticed hair matting before, we'd get him groomed every 2 months, and would wash him ourselves every 4 weeks.

We take him out for two to four walks every day, for 30-45 mins each time, and we never noticed matting of the hair much at all.

Now in the last 3 months, we've seen it become a HUGE issue on his ears, and behind them, and occasionally on the chest.

We've tried a few things, but if we brush his hair every day, he's already got tangled areas and it's too late to do anything, they seem to arrive after each walk? or just life.

He absolutely hates having his ears brushed, I think mostly because it is a little painful, because they've already got matted.

There only seems to be two modes, no tangled hair (great) and very tangled hair ( painful and too late to do much about )

I've done quite a lot of research, and I've seen a lot of products that seem to get average at best reviews

I'm not sure how we could get his ears cut that much shorter?

Are there hair conditioners that work?

Are there particularly good brushes? I've noticed the ones that are quite soft and not particularly dense, Basically, don't do much. And the ones that really work to get through the hair, cause too much pain for us to use ever.

I've done quite a lot of research, but I feel like I'm missing a trick here. Or do we just accept that quite often ( daily ?!!) we need to cut them out?