Brad, it would be good if you could add the space at the ends of the house so we could see a complete, unified scene ... all from the same perspective. To capture it, return to the same camera position and pivot the camera to take slightly overlapping pictures which include the additional space. Do not change the camera location or it will mess up how the background fits together in a reassembled picture. And do not make a panorama as it will shrink the scene too much. Just add the additional pictures. Let's see all the way to the neighbor's yards.

I must question ... in the first picture it looks like a normal air conditioner in the front yard. It's not the best look, but then in a subsequent picture it enlarges into a black cargo container that is vastly more visually disturbing than how it started out. Making it grow larger is not helping!

I agree with Yardvaark's comment about the current screen being visually obtrusive. I might put something that isn't completely solid all the way across the front between the sidewalk and the left end of the house, such as a picket fence, and then plant gardens in front (low) and in back of it. That might not be the best solution, but I think it illustrates that you want to look for a way for the screen to fit into the whole 'look'.

"...seeing it's an old unit not a risk we want to take." To my way of thinking, if it is so old, why not yank it out and place a new unit in a location you'd prefer. It is an elephant in your front yard. Suppose you do nothing and it carks 18 months from now? What will you have gained? Deal with it and put it behind you -- pun intended.

Much better pictures.

I would remove the AC screen and return to the smaller, neutral colored, original version. Screening it only makes an out-of-place thing grow larger. I think if you plant better in the area, it will seem less obtrusive. Then, when it craps out in some future year, you can finally have it relocated to the side of the house.

The garden at the middle of yard does not work to distract from any other thing that you don't want looked at. Instead, it seems more like an impediment to better seeing an inviting entrance. I would opt for blank, clean lawn instead. The tree that's in the island might could stay. I don't know if it's a good tree and can't evaluate its placement based on the pictures we have so far. (It would need to be a picture from a distance showing the whole front yard all the way to the street.) If it remains as a tree in the lawn, you would want to remove its lower branches as it grows and keep a nice single trunk all the way to the bottom of the finished canopy. (Instead of letting it branch helter-skelter and become an ugly trunk.)

I like the idea of some evergreens to screen the side of the house to the left and help place a limit on your yard. (That is, if you have room for them. It's kind of hard to tell.) The rest is tidying up and simplifying the foundation planting. Right now, there are too many odds and ends one-offs doing their own thing. It needs some cohesion. Also, I'd eliminate the plantings at the near side of the walk and bring the lawn all the way to the walk. The plants there are like a barricade and they don't help the entrance to seem inviting. I can't say what the individual shrubs in the illustration are. They are whatever that grows there that would best do that. I think the little tree at the left corner of the house is an overgrown shrub ... like beautybush or something. Below the largest bank of windows, the depth of bed will determine to some extent what shrub will fit there. The groundcover near the AC needs to come up to the bottom of the two windows, but not higher. The rest are perennials. At the steps could be annuals or perennials. All the details you will work out in a measured plan view (looking straight down from above.)

With a small tree added to the right side: