Shrinking the eyesore

So one of the things that's bugged me immensely since I moved in back in December is the house phone intercom in the entryway. It's big. It's ugly. And it looks like the 1970s...in a bad way. I love the 70s...the movies, the music, the theatre...but NOT not in my apartment when it's the tacky plastic cheeseball look of that era.
At first, I was told by my Super that I was getting a whole new updated model. Hooray. But then we found out that it actually works. So now it stays.
I did have one brainstorm: the metal plate that surrounds it could be painted I thought. The same gray as the wall behind it. This would minimize it a bit and streamline it down to just the phone receiver in its cradle. It was something, anything to disguise it a bit more.  I sanded down the plate, primed it, and painted it...voila! The visual blight was a little less noticeable. To me anyway. And isn't that who really matters?

Here's how it looked before the paint job:







And here it is decreased in "size"...better i think: