Would like to spice our site up

As you can see here (http://www.swegerconstruction.com), my site is still designed using tables.

I'm in the process of redesigning using CSS (which I just read a fantastic reply to someone else's post in the HTML/CSS forum) and for the main site I think I'd like to stick to a 2-col, left-align design with a header and footer.

However, after going through so many different sites that use images so creatively, rather than dumping all of our site photos in our portfolio (http://www.swegerconstruction.com/portfolio.cfm) page, I'd like to sprinkle some of them (especially the Barleyhoppers photos) throughout the rest of the site or even add them as background images.

...I forgot to mention that I have approx 200k worth of photos from galleries from Hemera etc. and if I was to sprinkle architectural images how would I go about doing it?...

You'll also notice that it's designed using a dark red (#660000) and an off-grey (#efefef or #fefefe). This is because our company logo is actually either bright red letters (#ff0000) on a white background (#fff) or white letters (#fff) on a bright red background (#ff0000). The logo is printed with a Eurostyle font.

I realize that bright red and white can hurt the eyes to look at for a period of time, and of course I want our potential clients to go through our pages and look at our projects and read about our experience, which is why I went with the darker red.

I'd love to hear all suggestions and critique, please don't be crude or crass as I've already stated that it's already in the process of being redesigned.

Thanks for your time and suggestions!

For the images, you could have a random featured project on the home page. Or if the images are large enough, use a faint (but still visible) watermark version behind your text.

As for the colors, the red is a little overpowering. It works well enough for the header text and menu background, but for the body text I would go with black. The red is tiring on the eyes to read for very long.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the sliding menu, it's more distracting than anything. A simple <ul> styled properly should be sufficient.

Aside from being marked-up with tables, I think the current design has some good qualities - lots of white space, everything flows nicely and appears to be logically organized. :thumbsup:

On our portfolio (http://www.swegerconstruction.com/portfolio.cfm) page should I employ a slide-show for the images and should I have a limit? Or should I just post 5-10 thumbnails that can be enlarged?

Believe it or not - as simple and bland as this site is - it's generated more than a dozen calls in the last 2-3 months and is a far cry better than the original site which was converted from Publisher to HTML.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the sliding menu, it's more distracting than anything. A simple <ul> styled properly should be sufficient.

Now that it's going to be redesigned in CSS I'll replace that menu ;)