WPyogi - I just followed the instructions you linked to for creating a 'Child Theme' and I believe I've successfully created the child theme for the site.
Let me know if there's any info you can give me that would help my issue with the sidebar overlapping the footer.
Thanks.
Jose - Thanks for the tip - I may switch to Twenty Twelve, but I'm just trying to see if I can work it out with this theme. As I mentioned in my post above I'm happy to just bag the whole sidebar thing and take that content and put it in the main column. Switching to Twenty Twelve is a good idea though...that's what I run my personal website (http://www.joshrawlings.com/) on.
Thanks guys,
-Josh