One of my collegues pointed me at the css Zen Garden. I have to admit, I knew CSS was powerful - but I had always avoided learning it due to the flakey support in some browsers. Now nearly everyone is using a decent browser it may be time to stop using tables for layout purposes.
I always knew that table layouts were to be avoided to make sites accessible but I had never really found a better way - until now. I think I may just have to rebuild this site...