@Brian_Radspinner Thank you for sharing your work with the community and for the write up. It is encouraging to see that armed with a knowledge of CSS and HTML, you were able to find your way around creating an alternate layout. If you can find the time, I would strongly recommend turning this reply about how you approached creating an alternative layout, into a post in the Tips & Tricks category in this forum.
As a small aside, for those interested this is a very simplistic example of an alternative layout. Most of my wikis use custom layouts but predate the core facility for switching layouts. Once I get them updated I will publish them so that they may serve as examples of creating custom layouts from scratch.