Equalized Columns with overboard style.

I usually dont have this problem cause I use css3 and simpler styling for rounded clear containers but the Carbon Offset theme needs to be more cross browser and besides which the glass imagery has more shadowing and such it requires image slices to achieve.

Ive placed several divs around the main columns to bring in all that glassy transparent goodness but the equal heights bits need some tweaking to account for it. As im sure you know the equal heights bits are grabbing child divs of the columns-inner div and it is working but if I place my style markup around those it goes all cranky and sets heights on those. Placing the style markup inside the main column divs does work but really kills the whole effect as they do not get sized to fill their parent container.

Heres what I would like to have .. ive snipped out some bits for sake of saving space...

<div id="columns"><div class="columns-inner clear-block">


<div class="roundedTop"><div class="rLeft"></div></div>
<div class="roundedMiddle">
<div class="rLeft"> 

<div id="content-column"><div class="content-inner">				
<div id="main-content">			
buncha stuff here.....

</div> <!-- /main-content -->
</div></div> <!-- /content-column -->							

</div>
</div>
<div class="roundedBottom"><div class="rLeft"></div></div>		  



<?php if ($left): ?>

<div class="roundedTop"><div class="rLeft"></div></div>
<div class="roundedMiddle">
<div class="rLeft">				  
<div id="sidebar-first" class="sidebar section region"><div class="region-inner">

<?php print $left; ?>

</div></div> <!-- /sidebar-first -->

</div>
</div>
<div class="roundedBottom"><div class="rLeft"></div></div>			  
<?php endif; ?>

</div></div> <!-- /columns -->

Other css methods do not work as my background slices are clear and cannot overlap, this css method seems to work the best but needs further tweaking on the equal heights bit. What I need is those heights set on the sidebar-first, content-column ect from within my style markup and then they will push everything together as expected.

Is there some better way to accomplish this? Im sort of stuck as I am no javascript guru but Im thinking we could explicitly name the column names rather than targeting the first children of the columns-inner div. Do ya have any tips or tricks for this sort of thing?