Remodeling woes and whoa's!

We recently remodeled our (only!!) bathroom. After many many (MANY!)snafus, its pretty much done and I finally downloaded pics. (pro of having an 8gb memory card for your camera - can hold lots of pics, con is that you are in no hurry to download pics- our Europe trip is still on there! )

Anyway, here's some before pics:

Here's some in progress pics:

We decided to keep our tub and get it reglazed. Now, they also had to take the old glaze off - note the blue underneath. Now, please remember that we knew it was going to be reglazed so we were a big sloppy with the mortar and other things, so the "before" looks REALLY bad:

And here's the "after":

Yes, it really IS the same tub. Really. 7 1/2 hours of scraping (and more scraping) and finishing and spraying, it really looked like a brand new tub. Amazing and worth every single penny (yes, we paid someone to do this).

Here's the after pics- its a small bathroom, so its hard to get a good angle:

Trust me, we went from 1985 printed wall paneling and bronze fixtures to a 2009 look with a lot more storage. Dramatic improvement.

So now we have a recently remodeled bathroom and kitchen, and while both look really pretty good, both were really stressful (showering somewhere else other than your house for 2 weeks in a row really sucks, as does having a destruction zone for a house when you're both sick). Mr. Lush and I are not really very handy, so we have to give special thanks to my parents, his parents, and of course Mr. Luce for the quick mudding and custom shelves. (its just going to be light stuff up there, like toilet paper, no worries!)

Here's what we have learned in our remodeling (lessons for the novice):

1) Everything will cost more than what you think. Even with the good deals, the little stuff will add up and it will end up being more than you thought.

2) Everything will take longer than what you think. Really, especially if you're inexperienced and doing ANY of it yourself. Even pros take longer than they quote sometimes.

3) Ok, everything will take a LOT longer than what you think.
4) Read directions and measure. Then read directions and measure again. In a hurry? Reference #2 and #3.

5) Neither one of you is probably as good as you hope you are on anything. Try to capitalize on what you are good at but still take your time on every single thing you do. Hurrying = mistakes, I promise.

6) Recognize that you will be crabby when you slowly realize #1-5. Apologize to each other even if you think you're right; its a good chance you're both stressed out and tired and just want the god damn motherf***ing project to be done. It will be someday and there's no sense breaking up your relationship over it.

I'm not saying we can really do either of these projects again alone, but we have come a long way. At the very least, we've managed to stay together through 2 majorly stressful remodels and that's something......right?