@jwillhouse - Your plumber has a vested interest in convincing you to buy things with a markup. I can assure you that the same part numbers are the same no matter where the faucet is ordered from. As for your contract with your plumber, is it a time and materials contract or cost plus contract? Your post notes that your plumber lists retail, wholesale, and a 15% markup. If it is a time and materials contract and the 15% is the mark up from wholesale to retail, then it is on the low end of markups. If it is a cost plus contract then the markup is on his actual cost less any rebates, so the 15% should get added to what he actually paid not the listed wholesale price. In a cost plus contract, the 15% is likely unavoidable as it is still a cost even if you buy it somewhere else. Many contractors in a time and materials contract don't allow you to supply your own items. --- While it is absolutely true that you can benefit from sourcing products cheaper from sources other than you plumber, we should recognize that to some extent it is a zero sum game. Most plumbers are not getting rich off a single family home, they are just finding alternative ways to present the profit they need to make. So while adding profit to a faucet may seem like a ripoff, if all the faucets were bid at cost the plumber would likely just charge more for the installation and you would be in the same position. It can still be an advantage to you to get your faucet at a cheaper price if your plumber allows, but don't fall into the trap of thinking you are getting ripped off just because the plumber adds profit there instead of somewhere else.

Oh, honey... I understand your frustration better than you know! My aunt, the dowager queen of that side of our family, died leaving a cottage full of things she had kept for umpty-ump years, many of them her (and my mother's) parents' things. It happened fairly suddenly, leaving me responsible for removing everything. I rented a storage unit in a well-run place. I distributed everything I could to other family members who wanted them, kept the silver and china and a few other things of value...and paid to store the rest for years. I was determined that everything go to the right place, and for the right price. $15,000 in storage fees later, I finally gave the rest of it away. We still have things in storage, but had I been able to deal with it all at first, I'd feel a lot less foolish. It's not pathology, darling...it's family conditioning, an old-fashioned sense of value and responsibility in a time where those values are more rare, and your knowledge that those things that are not treasured by the marketplace just now really should have recognized intrinsic worth. But your time and your psychic health have more intrinsic worth. Try to make a bargain with yourself. Rent a van, rent a storage unit, pack away the things you KNOW are worth something, deliver the rest to the auctioneers and the charity shops you've ferreted out, and take yourself out to Buddakan or Davio's for a whacking good dinner. It's like ripping off the band-aid. Hurts like the devil now, hurts less in the long run.

Wild Swan is probably my favorite book on China - fiction or non. The stories of her grandmother, mother and herself read like good fiction, and I came away with a much better understanding of modern Chinese history and culture then I had before. I agree - I don't think you can really make any generalization about any country, but esp not one so big. Yes we export some of our most glaring stereotypes for all to see. But its so very different between regions, states, rural/urban/suburban, and so dependent on class, race or nationalities. Rather an interesting mix, actually. Im in a website that has a language forum, and people from all over the country pop in with their favorite regionalisms, and comments on others. Makes me remember how really diverse this huge nation is, and makes me wonder how in the world we managed to all stick together for so long!

The Bugatti Queen: In Search of a Motor-Racing Legend - Miranda Seymour