You can add the background without changing your templates, you just add it to the CSS file. As far as the layout and changing the templates, you would have to re-hack your .tmpl files if you change them. If you just like the table borders and can do without having the forums seperated, I used Dalantech's table wrappers for a springboard in accomplishing them. All you'd have to do is edit your tbopen.tmpl and tbclose.tmpl files and add the images to your server and code to the CSS files.
