The Chair Rail Height Dilemma

As you can see from the "before" photo, the bathroom in its original incarnation had wood trim supporting an inexplicably large quantity of towel bars. In this picture, I'd already removed 2 bath hooks and a towel bar in the interest of not losing an eye while showering, but you can see the residual mounting hardware.

Naturally, I removed trim and towel bars alike prior to beginning this project. Which brought me to my next design struggle. Do I put the Chair Rail at the same height as the former trim, thereby allowing me to skip the wall repair step?

It's quite tempting, but the former trim location is too high, and I'm concerned that the equivalent subway tile wainscot will leave the wall with that fashion-forward look of an old man with his pants hiked up to his armpits.

I think I will just buck up and do the wall repair, and put the trim where I want it.

And this conveniently lets my tiling progress as far as putting up some gratuitous trim today, even though I didn't work as diligently on it as I did yesterday.

Maybe I can even get a bit of chair rail up during the week.