I don't think you'll get very far sniffing around Wordpress with a theme on your own without instruction. It's not that hard to learn, but unless you get an overview from someone who knows what they're talking about then it's very easy to get frustrated. You really need to watch an up to date Wordpress course. I would suggest the ones on Lynda.com - if you have a library card and you're in the US then check whether your library participates in Lynda.com's free library access (I watch all videos free from NYC) otherwise it's in the region of $30/month to subscribe.
As well as excellent Wordpress courses, Lynda has lots of "learning paths" which are collections of its videos designed with a certain goal in mind. For example there is "
Become a Web Designer" which gives you all the basics of web aesthetics, UI's, HTML, CSS etc. If you watch a few of these courses you'll be a lot more confident about how it all works.
I have a friend who wanted to build a Wordpress website and got super frustrated that his "futzing around" wasn't getting him anywhere. I tried so hard to get him to watch those Lynda Wordpress courses but he just wasn't motivated. This is the thing though. You really have to want to learn. I honestly don't think web design is any more complicated than learning a DAW, but the trouble is that a lot of people think "dammit I want a site" without being prepared to learn the basics. If that's the case, you really need to recruit someone to do it for you. There are a ton of Wordpress developers out there and some of them have quite reasonable rates depending on what you want to do. A simple site of a few pages, they might be able to knock up in an afternoon. Of course if this is going to be a site for a commercial venture then it's a legitimate business expense. If it's just for a hobby, well you'll have to make web design your "hobby" for a while too!
I'm not a web designer by any means but here is my
dog walking service site that I was able to knock up myself using Wordpress with the X Theme. Took a lot of trial and error and quite a bit of CSS customization (and a few plugins) but I got there in the end, and I think it looks quite adequate.