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.