So if we were going to use this and change the default WordPress theme, there are hundreds of choices out there that we could start with.

See the WordPress Theme Viewer for perhaps the largest collections. After checking out a few, here are some ones that I like -

Scattered - would probably lose most of the goodies in the right column, and the unordered list style needs work, but appealing

Grubby Slipcovers - drop downs for archive and categories. Colors work well.

Redbar - looks as if it might not be hard to switch to a separate color scheme.

Any others that folks think stand out?