The "better warranty" they are referring to that you are paying more for by using the plumber's/GC's vendor has to do with coverage on more than just the fixture itself should it fail. When you buy online/at a non-preferred store, the only thing the plumber/GC will warrant is the install. When you use their supplier, they warrant the fixture, the install & any damage that may occur to surrounding flooring, cabinetry, etc. So let's say you buy your bathroom sink faucets online, they are defective and fail within the first year of install flooding the vanity cabinetry, warped the custom tub deck, and soaked the carpeting in the adjoining bedroom and closet & destroying the bathroom floor. You call the GC/plumber & they say the install was not to blame, it was the fixture itself. You are now on the hook to contact the manufacturer, handle the warranty replacement hassle yourself + the cost of removal & re-installation of the fixture + repairing all the collateral damage that occurred at your own expense. Now if you had bought the same fixture through the GC's/plumber's supplier, they would immediately replace the fixture & take care of the warranty paperwork hassle for you with no waiting, they would re-install at no cost & cover the costs of repairing all the collateral damage. So the next question is, how often do fixtures fail within the first year? I can't say for sure. What I can tell you is that my DM & DD bought all of their fixtures for their5 bd/3.5ba home online & none have failed. We bought most of ours through our GC/plumber's supplier + 2 fixtures online & only 1 has failed --the handshower (supplied by the plumber's supplier) started leaking out the sides of the twist control. It was promptly replaced within a week (it was special order to start with so we felt a week was reasonable). That leaves the final question of what level of risk are you willing to take / is the 20-30% higher price worth the peace of mind of knowing you're covered in the event that the worst happens? Only you can answer that one. You may want to do a search on the 'Bathrooms' forum on this topic--there are plenty of threads on there discussing this very topic. To answer your actual question of where we bought our fixtures--the ones we bought ourselves were purchased from www.irawoods.com. Hope this helps! This post was edited by mydreamhome on Wed, Jun 5, 13 at 23:35

Hi All my Smaller friends! ML, I would buy flood insurance today if they offered it. My agent said that you can only buy it if you are in a flood zone, and I am likely not. Did I tell you folks about the blue line under my house? I was looking at the real estate listing of the house across the street. I wanted to know the current asking price because it is identical to our house. Well, their asking price is now $30K less than what we OWE on our house, and we paid 20% down when we bought! Anyway, there I was on the page and I impulsively clicked on the "map" link. It showed a street map, but there is a blue line that starts about two blocks behind our house, goes under our house, and then under the whole row of houses on the side street. We are on a corner, facing east. The house across the street is in a line of houses facing south. The blue line follows the street (but is up under the houses, not under the street) for a bit, then turns a bit south. When it reaches the next major street a half mile away, it follows that road south for two miles where it hooks up with a creek! Okay. So what we have here is either a spring, an underground creek, an underground river, or a runnoff culvert. Yes, under my house. Could it be part of the reason that I have so little dirt and so much air holding my slab floor up? Steph, the inside IS a vast wasteland! It echoes! For our smaller homes, a 12 x 16 ft room is pretty big, and with the echo, it qualifies as vast. There is a 7 x 7 foyer, too - all empty and stripped down to its crumbling concrete floor. Oh- and the hole in the floor. It shows the hole in the soil under the house, too. You should hear the boy dogs howling together at dawn with the echo effect, quite impressive for two suburban hound-mixes who are wolf wannabees! I agree that we all learn from each other. Everyone else's projects give me ideas for m own home. I got the idea of using regular, used, plank bookcases from an HGTV show. They spruced up someone's dark family room by painting their built-in bookcases a lighter color, adding molding to the edges of the planks to make the shelving look more substantial, and lightening other parts of the room. Mama Goose's kitchen is just what I always wanted to do with mine - pieced together from sources far and wide with many different aged parts, and lots of improvisation. Only, MY DH was not ready for that, and I got carried away with my matchy-matchy set from Green Demos. But I really love Mama's more. I used to think that I wanted new furniture that I picked out myself. Now I know that I have always felt the soul in the used pieces, and they have always meant more to me. I have a handmade oak telephone table and stool that I bought at a garage sale up in the very northern part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The area gets lots of snow - it is in the Keweenaw Peninsula, sticking out into Lake Superior. I think off the old Finnish or Italian or Cornish miner family who likely made it, and how they used it for many years before it ended in the garage sale for me to buy. A table from down in Baton Rouge also makes me wonder about its heritage. Who owned it? What kind of family issues has the piece seen? Here is a link that might be useful: Where I started college, MTU

@Karen Lee regarding the "oaks" it just depends what you're looking for. Both are used for flooring. Red Oak has a redder color, and a more elaborate, wilder grain pattern. White Oak has a more subtle, finer grain pattern, and a lighter warmer color. If you're planning to stain, Red oak might take stain slightly better. If you want a natural finish like polyurethane, White Oak looks very beautiful finished naturally. They are both hard and durable for flooring use. Of course with all wood species there is variation depending on the part of the tree it's taken from, etc, but here's a quick comparison pic of Red Oak vs. White Oak to show the differences between color and grain. (Red on the left, White on the right).

I installed Carrara dog bone tiles in my guest bath and Calacatta basket weave tiles in my master bath. My tiles were ordered through my designer but she purchased them at Emser which is also a retail source. They have a retail store in my location but I actually looked at Carrara and Calacatta tiles at another place when I was selecting my marble slabs. Unlike marble slabs, one doesn't need to "select" tiles as the tiles themselves are variegated although I would imagine one would order a sample and/or take a look at the stuff in person. I relied on my designer, my GC and the tile setters to do quality control of the tiles when they arrived and also set the tiles out they look well. However, with smaller tiles, I am not sure that kind of color matching is as important as with large tiles in which the individual pattern of the tiles needs to "go" with adjacent tiles. I relied on her expertise in terms of purchasing from a reliable supplier who sells good quality materials. FWIW, here is a picture of my floors - I especially like the Calacatta tiles because they have gold warm tones which complement the warmer tones and other tile work in my master bath. Here are some pictures of my master bath - They aren't the greatest shots because I wasn't trying to highlight the floors but it might give you some idea of why I like the Calacatta. My Calacatta tiles are honed as is my marble slab because I wanted a "softer" look in the mater bath. I used polished Carrara in my guest bath and that is gorgeous but that room has a more "glitzy" feel although it is still traditional in feel since it has the same wood cabinets and a copper sink. This is the master bath looking through my doorway. It's a small bath in an urban high rise. You can see how the Calacatta tiles have warm gold as well as gray. This is a view of the shower floor while under construction. I chose to have the same flooring so as to not chop up the space as much as possible. Here's another view with the floor kind of peeking out - I am posting because it shows why I deliberately opted for Calacatta because of how it complemented the rest of the colors in my master bath.