Cellspacing, Border-spacing in Forumhome

[taphangum]

Hi all! I seem to be having a problem with my forumhome template and styling in general (via the admincp). I am trying to apply cellspacing or border-spacing to the entire threadlist table except for the header, where I want to use an image as a vertical border between cells.

I cannot figure out how to do this. I tried every possible combination of css, and I learned through some research that border-spacing (CSS) and cellspacing (HTML) must be applied to a table globally, and cannot be turned off for individual sections of a table, like rows and the thead. After a few hours of struggle, I resigned it to the impossible. Moments after giving up, I was redirected to another vB site that was able to achieve the look I'm going for: gray-bordered td.alt1 and td.alt2's and cellspacing/border-spacing revealing a light background on the entire threadlist table except for the head, where a divider image is used instead. I am at a loss.

The site: http://www.webmastersgossip.com/.

Any help will be met with such an insane amount of jubilation that vb'ers will remember it for years to come!