my bathroom needs your help

I can't remember if I've ever posted about the bathrooms in my little colonial money suck, but they are abysmal. I cannot say that they are the bane of my existence, because that would actually be my seafoam green hideously ugly kitchen, but they do cause me quite a bit of unhappiness.

We have one full and one half-bath, and the problem is really the tile. The downstairs half-bath has peach tile from the floor to halfway up the room, with a finishing row of black tiles at the top. The peach is incredibly difficult to match, and to add insult to injury, the previous owners found some linoleum tiles that are tan with yellow and gray flowers and laid it over the traditional black and white ceramic tiles that most 1930's homes have. They must have loved those yellow and gray flowers, because they also tiled upstairs in the same non-matching linoleum tiles.

The full-bath upstairs is slightly less offensive, with pale yellow tiles running more than halfway up the wall in the toilet/sink section and most of the way up the wall in the shower. OH, and on the ceiling too.

Think I'm joking?





Can you imagine what cleaning this bathroom is like? My neck hurts thinking about it.











I mainly find it less offensive because yellow is one of my favorite colors. But this yellow is very pale and very hard to match. For the past year, I have been steadily purchasing and returning shower curtains, rugs and bathroom accessories in my quest to find one that works. We had a yellow striped one, but it was too gold of a yellow. We had a green with yellow stripes, but it didn't look good with the black stripe. We had a plain white, but it was too boring. We had yellow, green and lavender butterflies, but it just looked weird.

Recently I found the current shower curtain, white with little embroidered bees on it, and I think it works. I figure that with a yellow and black bathroom, it is rather fitting to have little bees on the shower curtain. But now my little Eiffel Tower shower curtain rings don't fit anymore, which causes me great sadness, and I've been unable to find any rugs or accessories that match the bathroom. And this is where you come in.

I went to Tarjay this weekend and picked up some different colors of rugs, but I can't decide between the two front runners. I need suggestions, or I need you to tell me to go back to square one because they are all awful.






Here is the current state of affairs. Old green rug that used to match a previous bathroom, but now is old and ratty and is missing a patch of thread from being washed too many times.









Option one:




Hmmm, now that I look at it in this picture, it doesn't quite look like the right yellow, although it looked okay in person.













Option two:




















I still need to find shower curtain rings, plus garbage can, plus soap dispenser, etc., but finding a rug will help me narrow my search.

Thoughts?

And just so you have a clear vision of what this tile is like, here is a picture of the spot just near the shower. It looks more yellow than it really is here, less bright in person.

What we will do with this in the future is unclear, especially because it is cracking in the shower area. No mildew or rotting because the tiles are set into concrete, but it is unattractive all the same.




















No commenting on the dirt, please. Cleaning is Josh's responsibility, and his school duties have taken him far far far away from his responsibilities. If I told you it had been 3 months since the house was cleaned, it would NOT be an exaggeration.