Problem is there are many ways to do something in CSS and a lot of CSS is kinda ugly. My approach was reading some good CSS books (Handcrafted CSS is a good on

Problem is there are many ways to do something in CSS and a lot of CSS is kinda ugly. My approach was reading some good CSS books (Handcrafted CSS is a good one, Stylin' with CSS is another) and articles, also find sites with the look you like. With an understanding how good CSS works, you can better use a browser's CSS inspector to identify the key elements that make the layouts work in your favorite sites, create test pages and build your own stylesheet. Alternatively shop for with a pre-made CSS library (there's tons of em out there), I'd look for lightweight ones where figuring out how it works is more of a possibility.