I went through the hassle and made my own custom template from scratch.
at the beginning I played around and tried to modify exisiting templates but with these thousands of css classes a lot of the templates use it needs some efforts to completely understand the coder´s structure.
I wasted a lot of time trying to modify templates but never get it exactly the way I want it to look.
the trick is that you need a blank template.
the basic wordpress loops is so easy I really regret that I haven´t built my own templates earlier!
with the help of the codex.wordpress.org site you can find everything you need + you´ll learn how to add a lot more functions that all the other templates don´t have.
you have all related stuff near the bottom of this page:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes
this helped me also:
http://www.urbangiraffe.com/2005/04/12/themeguide1/
+ most important: get a blank theme here:
http://www.miklb.com/blog/2005/my-si...rdpress-theme/
oh and you can use every coding method you prefer.
you can also build the whole blog with tables or your custom css.
you´re totally free!