Cool man, I'm semi-new to layout making myself, but I do not some stuff so I'll attempt to help you.
If you are useing straight HTML with NO Dreamweaver then you'll prolly have to slice some stuff.
Anyways just for overall everything I suggest having a black background, and an Affilate thing as a frame on the right of the page so you just have to edit one page instead of going threw all your .html files and inserting new Affilates.
If not black just make sure that the frame is the same colour as the rest of the site, that way it seems to blend right.
Anyways I know **** for Dreamweaver os if you need help with that I'll help j00.
Now to Crit the layout, maybe make the banner red. Might just be my fascination with red, but it might make the metal pipes and **** "work" together.