Ah, the world of work. It's a crazy place. I remember when we had a meeting in a room that had a glass window to the hallway. The snacks for our meeting break were on a table in the hallway, thoroughly covered and wrapped. It was obviously not meant for passersby. During the entire meeting we watched as people walking down the hall helped themselves. At first they just kind of wiggled a finger under the plastic wrap. As that got looser, they went in for a little more. each person unwrapped it further and pretty soon it was a feeding frenzy out there. I was pretty appalled by it, although those of us in the meeting room who were facing the window were in hysterics at the comedy of it all. The people with their backs to the window couldn't understand what we were laughing at. Then when our meeting took a break and went out to eat what was left, we could see people peeking around corners for us to leave so they could swoop in for the remainders. After that we kept the snacks in the meeting room. Frankly I wished things like showers, retirement parties, birthdays, etc. would take place outside of work. They are such time wasters and you feel as if you must participate. I wish no one ever brought doughnuts and cookies and candy to work. It is so hard to resist when you have to walk past it a hundred times a day. Outside of work I would never eat a doughnut, but when I can see and smell them I eat three. And don't get me started on all those people taking up collections for someone;s retirement party, engagement party, wedding party etc. I am sure over all the years of my career I shelled out a thousand dollars or more. I was already married (and divorced!) and had kids when I went to work, so there was no payback. I left when my job was eliminated (and then decided to retire), so there was no goodbye party either. When I worked for a small nonprofit there was no budget for parties. Since I had one of the highest level positions, I felt compelled to buy most of the goodies. Leadership, and all that. Every birthday set me back $50. I'd load up on frozen TJs desserts rather than expensive bakery items. Oh well, I am just glad I don't have to haul myself off to all that craziness again. I like the idea of putting names on each donated items so those who are eating and not donating may feel awkward (but I doubt it).

I ordered all Kohler fixtures, fortunately, before the strike. However, I ordered accessories - towel bar, robe hook, tp holder a few weeks after I ordered the shower fixtures, faucets, sinks and toilet. A few weeks after I ordered them, I was checking up them since I had already received my first order. That's when I found out about the strike and that my accessory order would be delayed. I had asked if I should pick out something else, but the showroom told me they would try and see if they could locate the items I wanted. Not sure where they came from, but I did get a call on Thursday that they were in. So I agree with Xedos that you should see if the items you want are available somewhere. Difficult to tell when the strike may end. Luckily for me, I was able to get all the big items delivered within a few weeks and installed. The towel bar, etc was not a big deal to wait for!

Thanks David, I did consider separates (and am still). I know Axor has one sold as a separate but it's just under $2k. They don't make the separates easy to lookup either. It's a good suggestion though. It looks like it comes down to the extra cost of a volume trim and rough as the temperature valve is about the same cost of the all-in-one pieces. It also gets rid of the crowding problem I see in the all-in-one's. They have one big lever and the others are tiny. The Delta/Brizo temp settings look a little in the way of the volume setting. I assume the temp valves can deal with having the volume downstream well enough. So on the temp valve, do you just get the pressure balanced model or thermostatic ?

Our problem is that the toilets, sinks, etc. don't stay clean for more than a day or two before crud starts re-developing. It wouldn't surprise me if we need to do a re-pipe, given the age of the house, but we don't know how to determine if it's a supply issue or a pipe issue. Obviously a plumber has an incentive to say we need to re-pipe. I emailed our local supplier today to ask this same question. Hopefully they are willing to help us to figure out what's causing the problems.