I’ve hand coded for years now and I’ve tried and experimented with everything. Search engines change of course, but my recent findings indicate that it doesn’t really matter if you use tables or css really – but use tables in moderation. I use tables regularly, but I use external CSS files to define the layouts. Nested tables? To one level, but not generally deeper.
I wouldn’t overly concern yourself with one or the other. Just make the code efficient to some degree and you’ll be fine. Like Tryme, I use WordPress for CMS a fair bit too with some success.
If you are re-doing your site Gamtrak, I’d suggest designing one or two templates and calling the relevant one from each page: that way in the future you’ll only have to change one or two files if you want to alter layouts.