I have been editing the child theme, have got part way to what I want to do, purely by trial and error over the last few days
1. Does anyone know if there is a way to make all the content (text, header, widgits, sidebars, blog) areas the same background colour without having to find and edit them individually
2. How do you change the width of the footer to match the content areas
edit to add
3 - How do you make everything on the front page the same width ?
4. How can I either widen the blog area or centre it?