It looks like you have FRP - fiberglass reinforced plastic - panels on your walls and around the shower. They should be installed with the recommended trim pieces and silicone caulk. I have been looking into using these to convert my garage into a dog kennel. They are used in food service and commercial interior environments. Food for thought - your DH wants to cut corners which is not good. Maybe he is not really cut out for remodeling or is tired. I would be concerned about moisture damage behind your tub walls. If it were me, knowing that DH was not going to caulk, I would get my tush in that tub with a caulk gun and get busy. Caulking is very easy, there are even youtube videos out there. I suggest that you really research how to install sheetrock and cement backer board. How to install a tub and reconnect the plumbing. How to tile and grout. There is a lot of information on this forum if you search for hydroban or hydro ban and Redguard and kerdi. Mongoct and bill Vincent have great threads on the topic. Redguard is available at Home Depot and is cheaper. Mongct has 2 great threads on plumbing fixtures. If you go to the Terry Love plumbing forum, there is a great thread on getting a Kohler cast iron Villager bathtub in place. There are both good and lame videos on youtube. Get to Home Depot and actually look at the building materials and tools and start getting familiar with them and their prices. Draw your bathroom out on graph paper with the exact measurements so you can actually get a feel for the room. Even if you hire the work out, you still need to know how to direct the work to get the best finished product. But you will find more women on this forum who hire out the cement board and sheetrock work and do the tile work themselves - that is what I'm doing. As for the medicine cabinet, when you redo the walls, you can cut out the studs and build an opening with a header like a window for the medicine cabinet, and other recessed openings such as niches. Save your money and start learning and planning this remodel. Start itemizing the material costs - cbu, thinset, Redguard, cbu tape, sheetrock tape, sheetrock mud, grout, tile, paint, tools, etc if you think you can do some of the work yourself. If not, get 3 quotes for the tub/plumbing and the framing/cbu/sheetrock and the tile work - whatever part you and DH think you don't want to tackle. You may need more money to replace rotted wood. $500 is just decorating chump change. Plan the remodel in stages - tub and tub surround first, the rest later. Also plan on getting at least the bathtub and tub walls completed quickly so you can use it. Tear out the ceiling too. Bathrooms take a lot of detailed work and more money than other rooms. No, the tile on the walls does not have to match the floor. Folks do like to use a tile that has end pieces with beveled edges in the collection to finish the very top of the wall. Anything goes these days based on personal style = that's where browsing Houzz is great for getting inspired. I would use the same tile around the whole bathroom including the shower. I have 16 year old stone looking tile on my floors and I cam going with Daltile white 3x6 and 6x6 ceramic tile from Home Depot. I can cut it with a manual tile saw and run back to Home Depot for more pieces, or return leftovers. I still don't understand why you have to have a 13 inch deep vanity if the sink is going to protrude past 13 inches. Why can't the vanity be deeper than 13 inches. You will have to build one to get the maximum storage for your space. this is when having a picture of your floorplan with the exact measurements would be helpful. The forum could give you some good advice on the size and placement. I still think a wide pedestal sink is your best bet. Have you looked at the Kohler pedestal sinks - the models come in a variety of widths. There is not much storage in small retail vanities. To really maximize the storage, you really need to have a custom vanity made. Check out cabinet shops in your area because the prices are really not that bad - especially if you pick it up and install it yourself. This post was edited by Anna_in_TX on Mon, Mar 17, 14 at 18:46

we dont have a master bath, just put the main bathroom right next to the master bedroom (we prefer it that way since we are on different schedules, and was cheaper to build with one less bathroom anyway) We have the shower and family closets together in a room off of the bathroom. We dont store clothes in bedrooms, but put the closets where we get dressed at. having them together is so convenient for undressing and redressing right next to the shower. The shower is walled in around the ceiling, and has a vent fan, so moisture is not an issue. The bathroom is shared with everyone so we put the washer/dryer behind sliding doors, and turned the toilet so you cant be seen even if you dont close the pocket door to completely seal it off from the room. We also have a door out to the patio which works well for hanging laundry on a clothesline, or for putting filty kids straight into the tub. Ours was a custom build that seems to be confusing to some people that we dont have closets in the bedrooms, and get dressed in the shower room. Nevermind a door so we dont have to track through the entire house to get to the bathroom. Thats the great thing about being able to build your own home-do it to suit your lifestyle.

Thanks everyone. Brooke and ritamay- I appreciate your thoughts! I think a strip would be more subtle, less expensive and less hassle than the whole back wall. In fact, this wasnt even the glass tile that I wanted. The stuff I wanted was gorgeous, and completely sold out for a couple months. I think that all this brown might overwhelm the bath. Or I could just paint, not do any backsplash and wait. That may be the best route. I need to speak with the contractor and see what he is cabable of. If he cant do this, than it will be paint all the way. dianlo, I am so emotionally and physically exhausted from this project. You are right that I just want to be done. I DREAD going to home depot now, the sight of home/remodeling magazines makes me nauseous, and I am acclimating to the drywall dust/no kitchen/one sink (which is a luxury, actually). The only thing is that the concrete backsplash is not cheap, and I almost think that I could do something better for the money, or not at all.

If you remove the last part of the picture address you will see that this photo is attached to an online virtual decorating service. Someone has either bought a virtual design for their bathroom or is the "designer" themselves. I might have sounded harsh in my critique for the space because this sort of thing gives design professions a bad rap. Should this person have been a real client, they would have purchased a poorly designed space for their bathroom. It would be both expensive in it's execution and an expensive mistake they would have realized while standing in their tub attempting to dust the shelves off the bookcase. I do give points for creativity and while that's good enough for a first year design student, it is not for a design professional selling to the general public. This person does not appear to have attended a school because there are mistakes that are present in the space planning itself. It appears to be items plucked into the space and then "cool" materials plucked onto them. While we do want to encourage creativity and thinking out of the box, we do want to make sure we are being responsible. In my opinion, it is not a responsible designer that creates a major remodel for a bathroom for someone when one does not possess experience, education or a combination of both.