As I stretch a 2 hour project into three blog posts,  I finally get to talk about the opener that we choose.  I looked at a couple of reviews, and decided to get the 1/2 HP Chain drive Chamberlain.  It was also the cheapest one that Lowes had.  Since we have a non-insulated plain steel door, its quite light and doesn’t need a big motor.  The bigger motors also supposedly go a bit faster, but I’ve never been annoyed by how slow the old one was so I saw no need for it to go faster.   The more expensive openers also use different drive methods, either screws or belts instead of chains.   Chain drive is the loudest of those, but I actually like a loud opener as it lets me know when Jess comes home.   We got a Chamberlain after hearing that they had excellent instructions, which I  concur with  as they were extremely easy to follow.  All in all we are quite happy with it, and hopefully it will last much logner than the old one did.