If you're not interested in redoing all of the tile, you can paint it instead. There are a lot of DIY how-to's out there on the net, but you can also have a professional do it for a reasonable price. I see you live in Boston. A cursory search came up with this company. It states that they repaint tile for $7 a sq. ft. Depending on your space, that might be an option. http://www.bathprofessionals.com/index.html

If it makes you feel any better, I kind of dig your midcentury blue bathtub.

I just started redoing a coffee table last week. The lesson I learned? Sand it right the first time, because it becomes much more difficult to sand after you have stained it. So I wound up with a splotchy coffee table and and I'm plain ticked off about it.

htttp://www.CompartmentLife.com

Yikes! When we remodeled our bathroom we found out that when previous owners had fixed a leak, they didn't fix the damage from the leak and we had rotted beams behind the shower surround! We (by we I mean my father-in-law) had to cut away drywall on both sides of the wall to fix the beams. Fortunately the added expense wasn't TOO bad.

So far I've been satisfied with the results of our projects, but I have a nice long list of stuff I want to accomplish this year, so we'll see if I can continue that streak. ;-)

That is a scary "before". Isn't it always a shame to have to spend money on the practical things? We had to spend hundreds to remove an illegal wood burning fireplace insert our home inspector missed. Sigh.
~Tanya
dans-le-townhouse.blogspot.com

While maybe not inspiring ahhs of beauty it has the reassuring and fantastic look of relief.

Love the blue tub and tile - I hope you're able to find some replacement tile that will work rather than ripping out the whole thing!

I actually kind of dig the white mixed in with the blue... crazy I know. I would just leave it until you want to re-tile the whole thing. It wont' be a problem until you want to sell so I would just live with it and learn to love it for now.

I had an experience similar to Steph82's, only it was the wall behind the washing machine. The first time my father (and his over-zealous, allergy-prone nose) walked into my house, a week after closing he said "this house has mold." It was an easier fix since the W&D are in the garage, but very, very frustrating.

Hey I have seen worse and done much worse! I don't like the fixtures but think the tile patch has personality! Home ownership is not for sissies, right! Even persons experienced in home ownership with a lot of financial resources get in over their heads by miscalculating what they are getting into.

I tiled my bathroom top to bottom despite the fact I had never tiled before, am terrified of power tools, and have an ancient house without a square corner or even wall in the place. I got great tile on sale--just enough for the job because it wasn't made anymore--no breakage allowed. The walls are OK but the floor is chock full of mistakes. Good news, it has held up 30 years and I have forgiven myself and learned to laugh at it.

I agree with SDazzle, check out the tile-specific paint you can use. Don't forget that you can make the faucet wall be an accent wall, which could also really cut down on the expense and allow you to wait for longer for a full remodel.

One of my friends turned a replacing-one-broken-tile into a full blown bathroom renovation that included jacking up one side of his house because the foundation had settled and the pipes weren't draining correctly. It actually turned out great but the length and cost of the work was huge.

hey, just tile the wall white and leave the blue half-tiles to tie the blue wall to the white wall!

I actually kind of dig the white tile "back splash". I would pretend like you meant to do that and add more white accents around the room (not that we know what the rest of the room looks like).

I spend most of Christmas day this year dealing with a backed up kitchen sink. We had just moved in 2 months ago so things are still cropping up. This turned out to be a plug of junk 2 or 3 feet long in the pipes... On one side the job was free since I did it myself. On the other, that's how I spent christmas and I lost two great shirts to draino stains (bleach).

When we bought our home in '06, a small remodel turned into a complete gut/rehab of our mid-century modern ranch that lasted two years.

Lesson Learned: Don't tear down one wall unless you're prepared to tear them ALL down.

About 6 months ago we bought a new refrigerator. When we moved the old one we noticed the tile sinking down where it met the wall. They were easily pulled up so we took a few out and noticed some signs of either rot or termite damage. More tiles came up, and two layers of flooring beneath that, then hard wood floor, then redwood tongue and groove sub floor. Finally we could see into the frame work of the floor and a main support beam in the house. It had very old termite damage, where part of the beam had been removed and a sort of secondary support had been nailed in place but the nails were no longer really even attaching the two pieces, not that it would have done anything anyways.

So, we had rip out large portions of the drywall on wither side of the wall, and floor to repair the beam and then put everything back together. Meanwhile my fridge was in my dining room.

The bonus was that we were able plumb in the water/ice dispenser that we had originally decided we just wouldn't use. Plus a new floor, and new paint in my living room.

Then about a month later after much trial and discovery we redid all of the plumbing running from our house to our septic system. Fixing a serious problem where a contractor had run all the plumbing for a new kitchen in an in law unit to old pipes that led to ???? the original/filled in septic system from the 20s. Not to mention a patchwork of old clay pipes with sections of PVC repairs all of which had settled and were coming apart and not at recommended angles/slope. To say it was an unpleasant/expensive process would be a gross understatement.

I try not to think too much about what else might be wrong that I can't see.

The corollary to this phenomenon is called "feature creep," according to my husband's best friend, which is what happens when you take a simple project and add on some many extras that it becomes ginormous.

We just replumbed the entire basement to install a W/D set and had to be super-vigilant that we didn't add on extra projects "while we're at it."

I don't think this looks so bad, actually. And it's behind a shower curtain.

I have a horror tile story. During a gut rehab, with a small galley kitchen with only one L shaped counter, I designed large original tiles and ordered them from Italy. They arrived while I was on a business trip. The workers, unable to figure out the 'puzzle' of how to install them, broke them into a thousand bits, and installed the tiny broken pieces. When I got back, and walked into the kitchen . . .

The same contractor had cheated on the roof. While I paid for a new roof, he patched the old one. When I found out, I sued him, and won big. The judge ruled fraud was involved, and I got attorney's fees, a new roof, and damages. I think that's when the kitchen counter started to be a fun story to tell.

this makes me feel so much better about the bathroom in 1947 built rental property that i live in, haha. it's horrible, with painted over wallpaper, yellow & black subway tile, a serious need of a regrouting (on the to-do list), four very tiny tiles missing in a corner of the room hidden behind the bathroom door... mostly just aesthetics. except the always leaking sink, old plumbing & calcium/lime/rust deposits, & the bathtub with a permanent groove cut into it from a faucet that runs too hard in the same spot.

You can probably replace the white tile with blue tiles that match. Call B & W Tile in Gardena California and they should be able to help. They have a blue tile that looks very similar to your original tile.

We had a nightmare of an autumn when getting the trees trimmed led to having to replace the sewer line. The tree guy added on-- without our permission-- fertilizing our maples, which involved metal poles being driven deep into the ground. At just about the spot that he drove in (a neighbor saw; we were at work), our aging sewer line collapsed. We had to excavate the driveway, and an entire lawn to replace the line. It looks like trench warfare out there now.

The line was old, sure, but we'd had no problems before the tree guys decided to fertilize. Routine tree maintenance turned into an almost $10,000 sewer replacement, we had to get an abatement crew to detox the basement, and we'll have to wait until spring to fix the driveway and the lawn. I don't think there's enough evidence to go after the tree guy, but it's infuriating. The new rule in this old house is "don't mess with anything!" because you're liable to open up much bigger problems than you've started with.

Why not add more random white tiles on the other tiled walls and turn your oddly appealing, practical fix into a design statement!

What home projects have left me feeling less-than-proud? Ha! I'm not telling!
Sure there've been a few times things didn't go as planned and I ended up less than pround of the result, but I'm not going to draw someone's attention to the shortcomings in my renovation. There's always the chance they won't notice because they'll be busy looking at everything I did right.