I should have my husband guest blog on this, but I think he's too traumatized. 

Actually, I know he's really grateful to be done, but it was a harrowing experience at times.  Between moldy walls (expected) and very stubborn grout (not expected) he tiled the walls surrounding our bath/shower.  It looks awesome!  In fact, it makes the rest of our house look bad. 

The nice thing about going through some of these rough home improvement projects is, if you end up with a job well-done (which we did!) then it was worth the sweat, tears, and occasional censored word.  In the end, after hours of intense labor and many trips to Menards and Home Depot, my husband has learned exactly how to tile.  After he has a little time to rest (and forget the labor pains) he will probably tile the bathroom floor, then the kitchen floor, then who-knows-what. 

We did find that the last people who worked on that area of the bathroom did a poor job, so I guess you need to pick your projects.  If you really can't tile a bathroom, don't throw up some stuff that looks like tile but isn't water-resistant (yes, that's what they did) because it looks really crumby after probably one year!  We've lived with it for five years, painting it and trying to ignore the problem.  That doesn't work either.  Either do it right, or get someone else to do it right.