Comment by jstummbillig
3 days ago
Cool! I had codex have a go at calculating "effective price" on a few items, that prices in the assembly labor, and then also calculates the delta between price and effective price. Obviously very depended on how you value your time, but here are some items at $30/hour:
BRIMNES storage bed + headboard, Queen $549 + 320 min labor = $709 (delta: +$160 / +29%)
HEMNES 8-drawer dresser $380 + 236 min labor = $498 (delta: +$118 / +31%)
STORKLINTA 6-drawer dresser $250 + 224 min labor = $362 (delta: +$112 / +45%)
SLÄKT storage bed, Twin $450 + 212 min labor = $556 (delta: +$106 / +24%)
BRIMNES 3-door wardrobe $250 + 189 min labor = $344.50 (delta: +$94.50 / +38%)
ALEX drawer unit: $95 + 96 min labor = $143 (delta: +$48 / +51%)
BRIMNES cabinet with doors: $99 + 75 min labor = $136.50 (delta: +$37.50 / +38%)
KALLAX 2x4 shelf unit: $65 + 39 min labor = $84.50 (delta: +$19.50 / +30%)
Formula: effective price = sticker price + (estimated assembly minutes / 60 * hourly value of time).
I was surprised by how similar the % diff is across the board.
> Obviously very depended on how you value your time ...
More like how you approach life.
Assembling furnitures is a very fun and zen thing to do IMO. I know a least one surgeon who would gladly bill more $$$ but there are simply hours when the hospital is closed: assembling a furniture with your kid after a day's work is a cool and relaxing thing to do.
Friends of mine, about a year ago, asked me to help with some technical stuff on the first day they moved their startup in their new office. When I arrived, the desks hadn't even been assembled yet (they were late on schedule).
I helped them assemble the desks: I find that highly relaxing, gratifying and relaxing to do.
Many moons ago I did that too in southern california: physically building the desks, unpacking the PCs and monitors, hooking up everything (back when there were still, btw, people plugging the VGA cable instead of the HDMI one for monitors that came with both), running the ethernet cables, configuring the PCs, configuring the Linux server.
Doing it all. Then configuring the Linux servers.
It's like painting a place you move in's walls: it's got nothing to do with "how you value time".
I lived in four countries. We'll certainly move to a fifth one one day. I'm excited at the idea of going to the hardware store, buying paint and screws and nuts and bolts and whatnots and preparing the place.
And assembling furnitures.
If an ALEX drawer unit takes them over an hour and a half to build, IMHO they're doing something wrong. Many others on that list seem suspiciously high (the BRIMNES comes to mind). Curious how it came up with those values.
Sloppily. I doubt there's much information on the web that says "mounting a BRIMNES takes five hours, twenty minutes." So what's an LLM to do? Produce any number in the semantic vicinity of the sequence "mounting"+ "BRIMNES" + "takes". So that can be anything that says "building an IKEA closet cost me" or "climbing mount Bayimes takes on average" or perhaps even "building a mountain bayke [spelling error] can take". And then from all sentences that get close to that point, it takes the next likely token. So 320 minutes it is.
Codex inferred Assembly minutes = round(0.44 * steps + 0.70 * parts) from the data.
To be fair, a lot of these items are cannot really be purchased without assembly being required.
Or purchasing them in their assembled state can require even more logistical transportation overhead such as specialized vehicle rentals.
Your point stands though that furniture has a higher cost than the sticker implies.