1. I’m fine with losing that top header/title thing at the top. It’s one of the things I’m thinking about taking out entirely anyway.
2. Yes. I’d like to keep the sidebar.
Related notes:
I’ll be making some tweaks to the layout to make more room for the main content column that the Buddypress stuff will be in to have more room, and so it fits on a 1028 width screen. But yes, I need the Buddypress area to fit into the main content column, and since it sounds like this creation of two files (header-buddypress.php and sidebar-buddypress.php) option would be less buggy with BP upgrades, that seems like the safer bet for someone of my poor coding skills. Once it all just works, I should be able to do any CSS mods necessary to make it all look cohesive enough.