There are ways of doing this but I would discourage the use of tables at all to be honest. What you, as a new web designer, should be doing is looking into modern design techniques and layouts without tables.

What I'm talking about is XHTML layed out with CSS. If you are unsure as to where to start with this then please PM me.

This should get you started:
http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/default.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp