I personally think the two doors look odd when "ganged" together with "unified trim." Perhaps what bothers me most is that there is no place to put the garage light that it doesn't look "off-centered." In your elevation drawing you show the garage light centered over the "unified doors." With it in that position, I immediately notice the light isn't lined up with the center of the garage door and so it looks "off". So, my first thought was to suggest that it would look better if you move the light over so that it is centered on the garage door. So I did a cut and paste revision of your elevation, moving the light over to the center of the garage door, like this... But that still looks "off" to me because now the light clearly isn't centered with the trim. So, then I thought, maybe if you didn't use "carriage style" garage doors but instead chose a simple panel garage door without an obvious a centerline... Okay, that looks a bit better to me but somehow it still doesn't feel quite right. So then I thought, maybe the problem is having just ONE light. What if she has two lights and centers one over the man door and the other an equal distance from the opposite end of the trim. That might move the light over the overhead door far enough from the center of the door that one doesn't get the feeling that is somehow SHOULD be centered over the door. So, here is that one... My final thought was, what if she used a slightly narrower man door (32" instead of 36") and then moved both doors an inch or so closer to the edges of the garage? That would allow enough room for the doors to be trimmed separately and have a tiny bit of siding showing between the trim. So, I made the man door 10% narrower and move it and the overhead door apart a tiny bit, resulting in this... Personally, I think separating the doors looks best. And, since you could open the overhead door if you needed to bring in something that wouldn't fit easily thru a 32" wide door, there is really no reason why that man door has to be 36 inches wide. It is not that difficult to find 32" wide exterior doors. Plus, having a narrower door there would also help to emphasize that this isn't the "front door." Anyway, just thought all these revised elevations might help you think thru various possibilities.

Mommy, (grinning on this one!) I agree a black door looks nice! But the previous posters have great points! * Does your door face North or East? If so, I wouldn't be that concerned about heat build-up. * However, if your door faces South/S-West/or West...well, just remember touching a black car on a hot day...OUCH! * If you have an awning, deep entry, or a well-shaded West exposure, you may be OK with black. Faron

Here's the front porch with the new porch light:My brother Kevin bought the red mailbox in Palm Springs the last time we were there - it is difficult to find interesting mailboxes, but I think this one is okay. The porch light is new, and I bought it and installed it temporarily before the painters started because I wanted to get it fitted in first. It is from Kuna, but I bought it at Lowe's, and it was the first one (and only one) I found that has LED lamping and motion detection with a modern design that I found acceptable. It's not the greatest or most interesting design, but I am okay with it, and it is infinitely better than what we had before (see photo way above). This sconce does much more, however, and I have decided that I like the added features. First, it has an additional security camera that only starts recording when someone approaches the door, and it makes a doorbell sound outside as well as on my phone to let me know that someone is at the door. I also see the photo/video of the person on my phone. The other two security camera that we have are hardwired to a screen just inside the door, and these cameras start recording when a moth flies by or when a cat walks on our driveway, and so they are a bit too sensitive, but I think I might be able to adjust that. The old security cameras are not equipped with WiFi (I didn't have a Smartphone when we got them), but the video screen does have a memory stick that saves the videos, although we have to take it out and download whatever we want to keep. The video screen also has an intercom so that I can talk to someone at the door if I want to, whereas the light does not. We used to have a clear window in our old door, but when we got the new door, we had to get the security cameras so that we could see who was on the front porch without opening the door. We've not had any Jehova's Witnesses visit us since we put up the security cameras. I don't like the look of the security cameras, but I am pretty much stuck with them.

I think you can mix door panel arrangement if it follows a system, having lived in a couple of very old houses (pre Civil War), that had more than one door style in the house. (These were also very large houses with 4 stories, so distinct public and private areas.) Most 20th century houses don't really lend themselves to the systematic approaches to trim levels like these older houses. But I think that there is one way to make it work, and that is to have a simpler door on closets inside rooms. So one style on the room entry doors and a simpler style on closet doors. So you could do a panel door of some sort on the room door and a simpler panel or slab on the closets. But it has to make visible sense that you can discern easily rather than a mish mash. I think a "shaker" door has actually become "modern" or "contemporary", (but it is not MCM), just through it's almost ubiquitous use in current homebuilding practice. A flat recessed panel with minimal sticking is the Default door for virtually all non-"traditional" new construction in my area. But I don' t think your plan of doing one style in one wing of the house and one in the other is systematic and I don't think it will do anything except make the house look like you remodeled it at two different times and you weren't paying attention to what you picked out between jobs. Either a slab door is too boring or it's not too boring, either a multipanel door is too elaborate to use or it's not. It's not something that is or isn't depending upon which room in the house it is. Pick one and stick with it. is probably the best option. Just liking more than one thing is not a good enough reason either. I could find a dozen door styles that I would like in some sort of context, but that doesn't mean I should use one of each if I have 12 doors. You don't wear one of each shoe, because you can't decide between two, you generally don't wear the patterned top of one suit with the different patterned bottom of another because you like both. A house is the same way. In fact, maybe stricter, because you can go home and take off the mismatched outfit at the end of the day.