I have had Delta in the past and am 100% happy with them. I currently have a 12 year old Delta Venetian kitchen faucet that is rock solid. Decided to go with Delta for my husband's bathroom remodel. I bought the same model number that is on their website. Bought from an on line plumbing store. The faucet it's self is heavy and solid. Two things I'm not happy with. The water flow...and that's after I had my plumber remove some funky shaped water restricter. It didn't make a of difference and he was about to remove the other one when my husband said that was fine. The water out of my Jado sink faucet in my bathroom comes out like a garden hose and I love it!. I'm sure its all in the name of water conservation but I'm not happy withe small water stream from the Delta faucet. The other thing is the drain stopper. The metal (plastic) disk that actually stops up the sink is flimsy and PLASTIC! I called to tell them I didn't care for it and would like to have (buy if I had to) one made of metal. They don't have one. They're ALL plastic :o I couldn't beleive my ears! I had planned on using a true (metal) popup but everything happened so fast and it was a two week wait for the popup so I just let him use what came with it. Does it hold water? Yes it does. I tested it. But I'd like for it to look nicer and not tilt slightly to one side. I wonder if Delta is going downhill :( They still have life time warranty on their faucets, including the finish

Thank you astridh. Choices are limited with ORB (2nd choice) and even more so for black (our 1st choice). We knew black would be next to nonexistent but didn't know ORB would be as challenging as it was! We did find something today on faucetdirect.com that will meet our needs. Demo starts Monday on our hall bath and master bath and closet the following Monday. Have gleaned a lot of ideas from all the talented, helpful people here!

That's exactly what I did (using Google specifically and ironically, Home Depot and Lowes, and efaucet.com, chicagofaucetshoppe.com, van dyke's restorer, Restoration Hardware (which has exactly what I'm looking for, at >$2k), and build.com and a million other sites that looked promising) and came up with very very few options, specifically the ones I listed above. Cross handles are fairly brand specific and are not universally replaceable. There are some "universal" ones, which we currently use, but as they are not faucet specific, they have poor purchase (at least on the shower set we have now) and slip eventually. We replace them ~ 1x/year. At ~$24/pair, not a deal breaker, but annoying.

I've seen a bathtub set up the way you want. It had a standard tub faucet down low to service the tub (and in your case you could add a hand shower diverter), and a second faucet set up high to service the shower head. The upper one wouldn't need a diverter, as it would feed straight to the shower head, just like in a shower-only stall. This should be fairly simple to plumb since the wall will be open anyway. The concerns I would have would be if your code authority would want you to use larger water pipes because there are two sets of fixtures. They might also, or instead, want a larger size drain. I wouldn't think these would be required, but, you jurisdiction/inspector might vary. An additional option for you on the lower filler would be to use a standard 3 handle valve set (middle being the diverter valve) and instead of sending the output to an upper shower it just go to a stubbed out pipe where you could attach the handshower.