The thing that finally made the difference between living with my bathroom and fixing it was an article I stumbled on about painting tile. Here was my answer to the floor I hated but couldn’t justify replacing. (Also just the thought of having to move that tub is daunting.)I had to coat the floor in a really really good primer.

Then I took a small brush and the grey paint I had bought for the walls and painted the grout in.

Then I repainted the walls. In the rest of the house, the wainscoting is white. It was dark purple in the bathroom when we moved in and for some strange reason it never occurred to me then to match it to the rest of the house but it had bothered me since. So the wainscoting went white and the walls a neutral gray