Configure Front Page For Side-By-Side Blocks

Hello,

I have been using Drupal for about a week now, and I'm totally converted. Thank you for Barron, I really like this theme. The colors and styles really work well for the next version of a site that I'm rolling out.

My request is this:
I wanted to configure the front page to have side by side blocks in the main content area. This way I can plug content into the blocks instead of (and along with) promoting blog-style top over bottom content.

The usual layout of barron is roughly:

header & top nav

sidenav | main content

I wanted it to be like this:

header & top nav

sidenav | frontpage content 1 : frontpagecontent2
sidenav | frontpage content 3 : frontpagecontent4
sidenav | main content (blog style)

I tried to configure this using views, and then again using the Front Page module, I wasn't successful. So I kept wondering if the theme could just be extended.

I finally established the desired effect using tables in the PHP, along with expanding the CSS and template just slightly.

I'm including the changes that I made, which work fine. My preference would be to accomplish this without the table, and just use CSS, but I don't quite have the CSS chops to do that. I'm going to continue using my modified version, but if this eventually becomes a feature of the main Barron theme, I would use that instead. I'm sure that the theme author knows a way to accomplish this with a much more robust and clean technique. I'm including the mods that I made to the files for review.

Thanks again,

- Rory