towel bar trouble

In been prepping to paint our guest bathroom, part of the fun (between the taping, sanding, re-caulking and hole-patching) has been removing our lovely towel bars.  I'm not a fan of the spotty chrome that's flaking in places and hope to replace them with something more our style.

It doesn't help that the previous owners globbed paint around the edges.. which led to prying the towel bar off the wall.

And there's more!  Along with the gloopy paint ridge, I found remnants of more wallpaper..

How lovely!  Hunter green, pink, mauve, navy, cream, and gold... for some reason this makes me think of the "Fresh Prince" mansion.  Why?  I have no idea.

Other than a few surprises, it was really simple to remove the towel bars.  I was pretty unsure where to start, but I followed these steps and it took maybe 5-10 minutes to remove three towel bars:

1. Find the teeny hidden screw at the underside of the bar mounts.
2. Unscrew using a teeny precision flathead screwdriver (and if needed use a razor-blade to cut through gloopy paint) slowly work the towel bar mount loose from the wall.
3. Once the bar is removed, use a phillips head to remove the mounts from the wall.
4. Patch holes and sand smooth.

Pretty simple.  In my case, I had to soak a sponge in HOT water and use the barely moistened sponge to loosen the wallpaper adhesive.  It took a few minutes before I could carefully peel the wallpaper off.  I made sure to let things dry out before patching and sanding.

I'm hoping we can find some cool towel bars on clearance somewhere that are more our taste. 

This Fontaine set on Overstock looks pretty neat.. but is expensive!

  I'm also drawn to the "Preston" by Moen.  I found these at Home Depot and they're closer to our price range.

For now, I'll keep my eyes open for a good deal... hopefully I can cling to patience and my stubborness to not spend more than my budget allows.