Drawing curved lines in Photoshop CS 4

I'm sure there's a simple way, but I just can't seem to draw a basic curved line in PS CS4.
I'm designing a simple floor plan- black lines on white background- nothing 3D or fancy. I have so far just used straight black lines, but for the doors I wanted
to create a curve to show the sweep of the door as it opens.
I'm new to photoshop, so at first I tried to do so in a shape layer, as I did with all the straight lines. annoyingly, this always resulted in a filled in solid shape- not what I want at all.
I then found out about paths, so I created my curve as a path, which seemed to be working in that it didn't automatically turn into a solid shape, but remained simply a line.
However, I found that the path was not actually showing up in my floor plan unless I had it selected and was working on it. I worked out I could link it to a layer by creating a vector mask.
However, this still meant the curve didn't display within the document when I saved out. If I rasterized the vector mask, it just made everything go black.
Please can someone explain if there's a simple way of drawing a curved line?

Hi,
Thanks for your response.
I'm a little confused-
"Paths are not pixels, so unless you
• use a Path as Vector Masks on Layer/Group that has content
• apply "stroke Path with …"
• use the Path as a Clipping Path"
Does this mean that if I make the path with my curved line on it into a vector mask, apply a stroke path and then use the path as a clipping path, it will show up in my document? I tried doing this and it didn't work- when I saved out a jpeg it was blank.
If it makes it any clearer, this is what I'm trying to get to be part of my pixel output:
I did actually try your suggestion of playing around with Layer Style, and this sort of seems to work in a weird way, but it seems incredibly strange that Photoshop doesn't provide a simpler way of doing something as basic as drawing a line!
thanks for your help, really appreciated.

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