Oddball issue - GFX Vert In Tables?

First, let me say that WebWiz is an awesome resource, and I deeply appreciate it.  You've saved me from reinventing the wheel twice now, and I'm very grateful.

Now, this oddball problem.

I design in ASP. Access, and VBScript using Dreamweaver.  Should be a perfect fit for WWF, and in nearly every respect it is.  I've installed the files, moved and renamed my .mdb, changed the admin account and password, created some forums, and posted in them.

The problem is that I have a pretty elaborate site design - much like wwg.i, in fact - that incorporates a banner area across the top of the page, vertical menu on the left, and so forth...and no matter what I do, when I try to put the WWF pages inside a table, the graphics display vertically. 

Not just the navigation graphics, either.  If I navigate to a post that I can edit or reply to, the buttons for the WYSIWYG display vertically.

I thought that, because I make extensive use of CSS table definitions, that maybe it was just some quirk with something in my code somewhere, so I started stripping my code out, little by little, until I was left with nothing but the original content plus <table><tr><td> in the header file, and original content plus </td> </tr> </table> in the footer file, and I detached my CSS file...and *still* the graphics are vertical!

I'm going to use the forum app regardless, because it's going to save me a lot of time doing a project that will generate no income...but boy, it sure would be nice if I could get the pages to display in the template of my website, with the nice layout and the vertical menu on the left and all that good stuff.

Any ideas?  Has anyone else had this issue?