So, clearly I haven’t gotten the new layout done up yet, and my weekend’s about at its close. Still making progress in fits and spurts, taking way too much time to find, try, and settle on the category banners (which you can peek at here, minus a few as yet unmade stragglers), which is keeping me from focusing on the code-y bits. So, going to attempt to force myself into a bit of a workflow here by making a checklist of things to do:

1) Finish the remaining banner graphics (possibly involving a new self-portrait shot for the Living super-category).
2) Finalize appearance for center and right columns (and what bits go in the latter), can come before or after Item 1.
3) Clean up code before grafting into WP, to save potential headaches and remove/more rigidly define placeholders.
4) Convert layout to WP, unrusting my meager PHP powers and figuring out the Category Templates thing as I go along.
5) Run through secondary WP pages to make sure nothing breaks.
6) ?
7) ProfitPublish.
8) Write.