just stopped using tables.Okay, we shouldn't use tables for making our layout. But the doesn't meant we need to replace all the table cells with divs positioned absolutely or by using floats. Your case is some what like or worser than having divitis (http://csscreator.com/divitis)!
You know, tables are the best tag for displaying tabular information. Similarly, there are a lot more tags other than <div>, and we should use them in their contexts. Or the idea is to initially make a semantic (http://boagworld.com/technology/semantic-code-what-why-how) document and then apply some CSS to style that document.
I'd recommend you to check http://bonrouge.com/2c-hf-fluid(r).php, to see how to make a good 2 column layout.
PS: Don't use excess inline tags. It not only makes your document hard to debug but also has many other disadvantages.
After all your code shouldn't have any deprecated tags/attributes and should pass w3-validation