I've posted a basic design at http://www.designhardscapes.com/temp/Design.html
You really need a onsite designer to make a more detailed plan. My advise would be to make access to the front door a focus. Peace love and paving.

Here is a link that might be useful: Paver Driveway

I notice your front door is on the second floor and stairs down from them don't really lead to anywhere except your patio. Your house does have a lot of symetery, so that might suggest a plan.

What throwing me off is the elevated front door though, if the stairs led direct to the door it would be easier to make some suggestions.

I would put a very deep planting bed around your bottom patio/landing. I think you need some very tall plants that can reach up to the front door height. In this case I would view your 1st floor as a very tall foundation that needed a traditional foundation planting to mitigate it.

I'm assuming, given your location, that the elevated front door is part of flood damage avoidance...? I'm curious about what kind of wall is behind the ground floor siding.

(I don't have anything really to say about your front garden design; given some familiarity I have with flooding in a differnt context, I'm curious to see how approaches differ in different conditions.... I spent a summer in my university days boarding at a farm that was located on a flood plain. Every spring their farm, and neighbouring farms, were completely flooded when the river overflowed its banks during the thawing of the winter snow pack. Their house was surrounded on three sides by a wide, one-story deep earth bank/berm. On the fourth side it was open to ground level and the basement (which was really at ground level) wall had a huge set of double doors. The cattle barn was also built into an earth bank with a ramped area leading to the second floor hayloft and secondary stable. As the river started to rise in the spring, they stocked up on food and water, tied a boat and a canoe up to the back door, moved the cattle up a level into the hayloft area, and opened the double doors into the basement. When the river rose, they let the basement flood and used the canoe to get to the barn to tend to the cattle and the boat to get to dry ground if they needed to go to town. Letting the water in equalized water pressure so there was less chance of the water collapsing the walls (that's why I wonder what kind of wall is behind the siding - reinforced concrete...?). When the river subsided, there was a big clean-up required of course but the ground level areas were kept pretty bare so it was fairly easy to clear the silt out. Since this was a northern area, ice was an issue too as the flood waters generally froze over; when the water drained out underneath, the remaining ice was heavy enough to drive fence posts totally into the ground! So every fall all the fence posts were removed and every spring they were replaced! The flood water brought rich silt/soil with it so the land was very productive - once it dried out and the mess was cleared up! So that was why they continued to live there even though they knew they were going to have to cope with the work created by the floods every year.)

You must have goine through some interesting decision making in deciding to rebuild and in deciding what and how to rebuild. It might not be garden related, but it would be design related, so I, for one, would be very interested in hearing about the design decisions you've made to get to this point....