I was curious how hard would it be to take a theme a customize to how I want it to look. Here is the regular theme: Then I would like to make it look like this: Or is there a theme that looks close to that already? thanks.
it's rather easy, you just need a basic understanding of CSS...if you know HTML well, give yourself one weekend and play around with CSS. You'll pick it up quickly. In your case, it looks like you just have to comment out a few things, like the tabs at the top, and the center/header image....and just add a wide banner to the top. All of these things are easy. You could even do them in HTML if you wanted to!
It's not that hard...I do it all the time, and I have no experience. Unfortunately my design skills suck , but it is very easy, just look around, and after a while you will be an "old hat", very quickly.
Maybe you could post the original theme website, I could help you to see which place you could modify.
try to play with CSS and the HTML file on this theme. I'm not very gud in theme modification actually but i always try and errors on it to customize it on my blog. Remember, always make backup before you make any customization. Otherwise, when thing doesn't work, it would bring problem with you. I also suggested to look at subforum in Buy,Sell and Trade thread there. I think there somebody could help you this matter.