Flush With Success, and Looking to Spend

Tracy Ballard and husband John Gorman of Cleveland Park enjoy their shower, which is nearly nine feet by four feet. (By Dayna Smith -- The Washington Post)

"The tiles heat the porcelain on the toilet, and the porcelain heats the wood seat," Schlachtmeyer said, with a note of glee. "It's controlled by the thermostat on the wall."

On a recent Saturday in Georgetown, people drifted in and out of Waterworks, for some the high church of luxury bath fittings, where tubs, like sports cars, have names.

The free-standing Beaumont model, for example, starts at $8,000 (primed but not painted); the copper Clothilde, $29,000.

"This is the tub like the Roche-Bobois!" a man said longingly, walking over to a vast, sculptural oval.

"It is!" a woman said. "Amazing."

Upstairs, amid crackled tiles, a sort of luxury arms race was evident.

In one corner, Chris Becker, 29, a government program analyst who lives in Arlington, browsed $750 Victorian shower heads that he said amounted to a "guilty pleasure."

"I have problems with it, actually," he said, noting that his kitchen has appliances, all top-of-the-line and vastly superior to the kitchen of his youth. "Part of me looks at this as so excessive and something I almost don't deserve."

Perusing the same fixtures, Hollis Freimark of the District said that in her view, the store was too "geared toward the masses" to be luxury.

"I guess this is great for your first house. . . .," she said. "If we want to bump it up, we have to go to the trades, see what's coming over from Asia and Europe."

Or, as Barry Goldberg, vice president of Union Hardware in Bethesda, put it: "A $300 faucet is almost on the verge of becoming a commodity."

He sat one afternoon next to a clear glass vanity with goldfish swimming inside.