I was a silly goose and made a beginner's mistake, and I have not seen it mentioned before, and couldn't find a google search (maybe because I don't know the right questions to ask yet), but my apologies if it has.
I was supposed to be creating a "Custom Page Layout" for the "Custom: Sales" Profile, in the trail I listed above. I did the changes, and I thought I messed something up, so, unfortunately, I thought "If I delete this it will just reset to the original default setting"... I was wrong, and now I don't have that profile at all.
I am just starting out, so can someone point me in the right direction of how to put it back / rebuild it, it isn't in the "recycle bin". I'm nervous about poking around too much because I don't want to break the sandbox even further. I'm willing to restart the sandbox from the beginning, but I noticed that SalesForce is a stickler for renaming things the same name as something before, so I don't want to completely wreck my profile. I hope that makes sense.
Thank you in advance.