Cheat. Use Blueprint, from Blue Flavor, which gives you semi-semantic layout in table style using DIVs and spans. Blueprint actually gives you more layout control than tables do --- your stuff will look better --- but gets rid of almost all the CSS headaches.
Standards zealots get all up in Blueprint's face because it's fundamentally non-semantic (you end up putting presentation details in your markup). But now you're splitting hairs. If you're using Blueprint, you get to call yourself a CSS designer.
+1 for cheating, and for BluePrint - it makes CSS bearable for those of us who aren't pros. 960gs (http://960.gs) is also a very nice framework.
One correction though, Blueprint isn't from Blue Flavor, though they did do an article on it. It's by Olav Bjorkoy, and currently maintained by Christian Montoya.
Thanks for the 960gs, looks great. As I'm starting a small side project without a frontend developer and I hate writing CSS, I'll consider using it. The previous candidate was Malo (http://code.google.com/p/malo/).
Also take a look at Bluetrip (http://bluetrip.org/) it combines features of Blueprint, Tripoli, 960 and Hartija. So you can get a nice CSS website running pretty quickly and then customize from there.
Ah yes, web standards zealots. These are the guys who run blogs debating the use of <b> vs <strong> on a monthly basis. The funny thing is that I jumped on the CSS bandwagon early (Netscape 4 era) because of the obvious benefits. Now I find myself disgusted at what the community has become.
They live in their inbred web standards blog world where they have a very polished view of what is "semantic" and what it means to separate content and presentation. All the while completely oblivious to the ecosystem in which web standards live and the constant tradeoffs that must be made in any software system.
Ignoring what should be obvious: there's precious little semantic information in an HTML document. The standardized tags are all but completely presentational. Naming CSS classes strictly according to some pedantic definition of "semantic" meaning "not presentational" is deluded. First, because we add classes to things because need a hook for presentational purposes. Second, because 99% of the time, the actual goals of writing HTML/CSS are presentation, concision, maintainability, and maybe SEO. It turns out you should name your classes descriptively, which may align with a semanticist's notion of best practice 80% of the time. But then the remaining 20% of the time they'll rip you new one for use class="red" instead of using a half-dozen "semantically pure" names like class="slightly_more_important_block", class="second_heading_in_a_row", class="something_i_just_want_to_be_different", class="sometimes_i_just_want_to_be_different", class="why_web_design_sucks_in_96" and class="i_love_you_man"
Standards zealots get all up in Blueprint's face because it's fundamentally non-semantic (you end up putting presentation details in your markup). But now you're splitting hairs. If you're using Blueprint, you get to call yourself a CSS designer.