Saw a $12,000 pergola down the street and it made me mad about my own build

I was walking my dog in Fair Oaks last Saturday and stopped dead in front of this house with a cedar pergola that looked like it came out of a magazine. The thing had to be 14 feet wide, with these 8x8 posts and a curved knee brace at every corner that must have taken somebody a full weekend just to cut. Here is what bugged me: I built basically the same size pergola in my yard two summers ago for about $900 in lumber and it still looks fine, maybe not magazine fine, but it holds shade and nothing has sagged. Whoever owns that place dropped five figures on a structure that does the exact same job as mine, keeping the sun off a patio table. I get it, nice joints matter, maybe they wanted it to outlive the house, but a pergola is a pergola. You water seal it once a year and it does not care whether the guy who cut it charged you by the hour or by the heart. Am I the only one who thinks the fancy pergola market is mostly selling photos, not shade?