Totally, completely, absolutely baffled by all this VM templating/layout stuff

[isurfedthere]

OK, I've installed VM 2.0.24 on Joomla 2.5.16 and successfully set up some categories and products. Now I'm trying get the cart to look halfway decent and I'm doing nothing but chasing my tail trying to even make minor changes. I've read through some tutorials, watched some videos, fiddled and faddled, and I'm going nowhere fast.

I'm no rookie when it comes to styling Joomla via CSS, but I will admit that I've never really gotten the hang of Joomla overrides, which is what seems to be the core issue when styling VM pages. I just haven't found a decent tutorial anywhere that has been any help. I thought I could just purchase and install a slick VM theme, do a few tweaks, and be done with it, but now I realize that themes went the way of the dodo since v2.0.

Man am I frustrated! Where should I go from here? I'd be stoked just to have a navigation menu that doesn't requiring clicking back and forth between separate pages for each category and product!

Here is where I'm at so far: http://askwhatif.org/hrgs25/web-store