Need some help getting started.

I'm a Designer that has worked with devs in the past. I know how to cut up pages and understand all the limitations.

So I understand CSS and HTML, but I've always hacked pages together in the past. (a lot of absolute positioning and transparent gif links on top of images)

I want to start to learn how to build a page from start to finish, properly.

My biggest issue is formatting the page. So I slice my PSD up, I've wrote a Stlye Sheet for my fonts/headers/bodies/links. Now where do I start putting all these elements on a page? Tables? This is the step where I give up and start absolute positioning everything.

Any links help. This is all front end stuff here, trying to make simple static pages.