[KTBleeding]

Almost any theme / style / whatever you want to call it can be done with minimal markup. I wouldn't take html code from another site, cause it's a bad way to learn it. You'll be using someone elses practices and they may not (most of the time) be practical.

I start with this base of html when doing anything (I have it very slightly more complicated cause I deal with a lot of multi column layouts):

<div id="container">
	<div id="header">
		<h1><a href="index.php">Site Name</a></h1>
		<h2>Site Slogan</h2>
	</div>
	<ul id="menu">
		<li class="first"><a href="#">Menu Item 1</a></li>
		<li><a href="#">Menu Item 2</a></li>
		<li><a href="#">Menu Item 3</a></li>
		<li><a href="#">Menu Item 4</a></li>
		<li class="last"><a href="#">Menu Item 5</a></li>
	</ul>
	<div id="content">
		Content goes here
	</div>
</div>

70% of the time I can do almost any layout with just css and without ever altering the HTML code.

The other 20% of the time is when I have to add in custom elements that just don't exist (say a phone number in the header, or maybe to display some flash ). The above markup is just a core shell of what I use.

Not as time consuming as you are imagining it, I'm sure?