Slowly I'm getting the layout for my website, more like I want. The home page although not perfect is not bad...at least on the browsers/screens that I've tested on. It even looks good on my android phone. The main problem is that I never found a documented solution, and basically got it to work by trying a combination of things, without truly understanding why it works. Not the best way, I'd much rather be able to say I did this because . In programming if something doesn't work...I almost always understand why. The biggest change seems to be moving the footer in the html and adding overflow: hidden; to the CSS.
It seems that just about anything is possible because there are so many ways of doing things. Other ways to alter position are Grid, Flexbox & Bootstrap. However I managed to accomplish what I needed without using those.