Life Memories: Bathtub Decisions

This story is hard to tell because there is a lot of lead-in story.  I’m going to skip all of it and jump straight to “I have to replace my bathtub.”
So Friday (Black Friday) I went to Home Depot and found a good steel-with-porcelain-cover tub for $120. I called my parents and they drove up their truck and we carted it to my condo.  Mom and I got it up the stairs inside and laid down.
We went to pull off the tile around the current tub and found something interesting. My condo was built in the late 60’s, and apparently they didn’t set tile the same way. We pulled off the first few tiles and found that the tile was stuck with mastic (normal backing/glue) – the tiles are stuck directly to the cement behind the tub – oh and tub is basically walled by CEMENT.  FYI – this is not the normal thing.
We had tried to pull off the tile carefully, Mom has a great dremmel with a grout tool. It didn’t work and after twenty minutes and no progress on the FIRST TILE – I said to hell with it, smash the damn thing. We thought I had a super-standard tile because it’s 4″x4″ and white(ish) with gold/tan/yellow flecks in it.  You’ve seen it everywhere right?  Yeah well I guess they stopped selling them most places in like 1985. There are still some places I can look, but it looks like I can’t just find replacement tiles.
So now I’m looking at replacing all the tile in the bathroom and what was supposed to be an afternoon-project has turned into a P-R-O-J-E-C-T .  I’m going to replace all the tile (probably), temporarily remove the current tub and toilet – oh and fix the toilet valve while we’re at it.  I’ve been looking at tiles for the bathroom (which is all the way around the room, not just the shower) and trying to pick what I want to do without spending a lot of money.
Simple project quickly spiraled… ugh.