My wife and I are redoing our master bathroom after some flood damage. We're also finding how quickly prices add up.

Does anyone know a good online source for fixtures like faucets and such? Amazon has great prices on some stuff, and then it seems like other stuff is WAY overpriced in comparison.

Where should I go?

Bath fixtures are something you have to go look at in person. What seems way overpriced is more often due to better materials and build quality if it's coming from the same manufacturer. Online is nowhere to go for these things until you've looked at them in person.

The best place to start to get an idea of what you're really looking at, is to find someone close to you who has redone their bathroom in the past 10 years. If you know any realtors, you might want to bounce any ideas you have off of them, since some things you'll get your money back on upgrading when you sell, and other things that you would consider an upgrade will actually be less valuable to the average buyer than a standard fixture, and what those things are vary wildly from region to region.

while I agree with you in general, I've been seeing gross differences between online prices end in store prices. Frequently double the cost if you're talking about a specialty kitchen and bath store. That's why I am looking for someplace online to purchase the things I'm seeing in the brick and mortar world. Also, it's very difficult to find certain things in actual stores, like transfer valves and whirlpool tub faucets.

You're potentially going to save tremendously buying online, but Heather is right that seeing/touching in person is practically a must for these products. Online, practicaly everything remotely "silver" in color looks the same, where in person you'll see a wide variance in material finish and quality.

That said, faucets.com http://faucet.com is one place a friend recently saved some dollars buying a Delta touch kitchen faucet. Very nice product. That said, the week after she bought it I found a better price elsewhere online.

So first narrow your choices to a few products and then comparison shop like everything else. Don't overlook eBay.

The big box stores are only going to have basic builder-level products by the way. But you might find something you like there anyway.

It also pays to look in your area for a building materials second hand place. It's amazing what you can find in those places, and the huge difference in prices from a new one, especially on high end products. This place http://www.greendemolitions.com/ is in Jersey buy you most likely have something similar in DC.

I definitely hear you guys on the "see it in person" approach. But purchasing this stuff in the store is cost prohibitive. Everyone I talked to in my area told me the same thing: go to Ferguson. Apparently this is a big kitchen/bath outfit with a full showroom with all the different product lines on display.

So I walk into the showroom and the first thing I'm greeted with is a display full of faucets. Great! Yeah, except each faucet was $1800! Fortunately I continued to wander towards the back of the store where they keep the "cheapo" Kohler and Grohe stuff. But the least expensive (and most popular, according to someone helping me out) faucet in the Kohler display was still $280, which isn't bad, but Home Depot had the exact same faucet for $175, and Amazon has it for $140.

The other problem I'm running into is that our bathroom has a whirlpool tub in it, and apparently faucets for these tubs are far less common than the regular shower/tub combinations. Home Depot, for example, had exactly three, each in a different finish, and none of them looked at all like what we wanted. That sort of forces me online for some of this stuff.

re: the tub. You mean a soaker tub with a long faucet? Should be the same type of faucet on a Jacuzzi or whirlpool tub. Where we are those are very common because almost every new fully detached house (and most semis) have soaker tubs in the ensuite bathroom. Most "lines" should have a matching faucet for that application.

I see faucets.com also calls these Roman tubs. http://www.faucet.com/bathtub-faucets/c80012

The $1800 faucets you saw were probably smaller specialty brands right? I have a faucet sitting in my basement right now that I'll probably never use. I got it from my brother who removed it from a client's place when doing a reno. It needs a few o-rings and maybe a washer or two, but I looked it up online one day and it was also close to $2k. Nuts.

I've pretty much already decided I'll be putting in a Delta touch2o model when I start back up on the kitchen reno. http://www.deltafaucet.com/kitchen/details/9159t-ar-dst.html or the Brizo version (Delta's "high"-er end line): http://www.brizo.com/kitchen/solna/faucets/64020LF-PC.html The only negative is that it's only got a 5 year warranty and not Delta's other stellar lifetime warranty carried by many of their non-electronic products.

Ok, phew. I didn't want to say anything, Bruno, but in your previous post and even in this last one, you mention "faucets.com" but then you linked to "faucet.com."

The reason I didn't want to say anything is that "faucets.com" appears to sell nothing but the lowest end stuff you can find. I'll check out "faucet.com" now because it looks pretty good...

When I first mentioned it, I just knew it was "faucet-something" Then I got the actual link from a Google search, because I knew it was where a friend bought her kitchen faucet. I just checked out "faucets" - definitely NOT the site I meant. Hehe.

Classy. This would go amazingly well with mauve shag carpet in any bathroom:

$618 from Delta.

$389 from ebay..

$265 from Amazon.com

That gives a pretty good idea of how much markup there is on this stuff!

tanstaafl.

Doug the markup at MSRP is definitely sizeable, like with pretty much every brand and many consumer goods. But the links posted are showing different models - the Amazon one is the non-electronic (non-touch) prep version.

$389 at Amazon (via Google): http://www.amazon.com/9159T-AR-DST-Pull-Down-Featuring-Technology-Stainless/dp/B0062OF80K