I have really been thinking about your house and what would give it more curb appeal, charm, or character. It is just a simple house and has lots of angles, squarish shapes but no curves, except for the wrought iron gate/door. The eye is drawn to the bay window and not to the door. So you would have to consider painting. You actually can paint the brick. And you might want to go with a light color. You can also paint the bay window. If you don't paint the brick, you can paint the bay window a darker color to compliment the brick. I would have a focal point outside the bay window and somewhere to draw the eye instead of the bay. I think all the plantings should be curvey. So maybe a bed coming out from the bottom of the driveway on the yard side and plants going up each side of the drive but flowing over the driveway a bit on each side. Also maybe a drake elm on the side of the house by the small window. That is a weeping tree, very nice form. I would try to save the evergreen, if possible. Maybe move it to other side of drive or nearer the street and to the side. You could have decorative pots or urns at either side of the top of the drive, maybe a curvey topiary form in each one. Or a small planter under each light fixture with a hanging vine planting, nothing angular. In the focal point out from the bay, nearer the street, could be a birdbath or bench or bird feeder. I thought about an iron fence along the drive and some iron planters or window boxes but I really think the place would look better a little bit lightened up and not heavy with iron. I would think about painting the iron door, or replacing with another (not sure the expense) that was lighter color (depending on if you paint brick or not) and maybe had a design in the center like a sun face or flower??? If you put a weeping or rounded form small tree on the side by the small window you could have a curvey, sweeping garden to incorporate the tree and come up to the house foundation planting. I hope this gives you some ideas. You could make a bunch of copies of your picture and draw in some of these ideas, copy it in black and white and try various color schemes.

I'm hesitant because the garage fails to open even when... Did you mean to say "fails to close"? Because with every garage door I've ever seen, the photo sensors only affect the door when it's closing. If you really have a problem with it opening, you may need to adjust the open force settings on the opener. These are safety settings that tell the opener to reverse the door when opening or closing if an abnormal amount of force is needed to move it. Yours may be set too conservatively. Consult the owner's manual for instructions on how to adjust these for your particular opener. This problem comes up occasionally in the Home Repairs forum. Here is a link that might be useful: Adjusting force settings

Stick with something you can get service on by more than one dealer. Clopay or Amarr are just two that parts and service are available from "any" door dealer. Overhead Door Co. is good but It is a McDonalds hamberger. You are really stuck with them for the rest of the life of the door. So if it was not a great experience, your stuck. You have a door installed, you decide your not really happy with the company, or the person that did the work, so you call someone else that also carries that door product for Non-warranty service couple of years later. With Overhead door co., you may not be able to do this. Your kind of "locked into them". Wayne Dalton is good but stay away from their, "Spring in a pipe" Lowes sells them too. They never work correctly. I get calls to service them often. I won't touch them anymore. You will have to contact them, (Wayne Dalton). Even they don't like them. They also came up with the "I Drive" door operator. That one was and Is still a big bomb also. Do your self a favor, stick with popular door names, with door openers also, otherwise no one will want to service them later... Dan

roarah, I can't remember where you live and what your climate is like. Your house is so pretty and will look amazing with the green siding. We picked green vinyl siding for our new house, and thought dark wood garage doors would look good with it, but wood doesn't work well with our climate (Alberta, with harsh winters and long hot summer days) or our budget, so we went with wood-look steel insulated doors. We also try to avoid extra maintenance, because we do most of it ourselves and with the farming have enough : ) . I'm not a purist when it comes to materials -- I love trompe l'oeil treatments and faux bois furniture, especially for the garden, and if I could afford either, they would be splashed out everywhere : ) . This is what ours look like with the green, in case this helps (bad picture from last summer), I'm not up on US garage door companies; we used a Canadian company, Steel-Craft. As far as I can remember, I think our choice was between Steel-Craft and Clopay. Do yours need to be insulated? How long did your current garage doors last, and how long do you need/want the new doors to last?