Hi Arnie,
If you want to have more freedom in the theme design, I propose to have a look at the different so called blank page frameworks. They all require Stacks 3, all pages have to be Stacks pages, so inbuilt plugins like photo album or blog won’t work.
Have a look at Foundry from @Elixir, for me the best framework out there.
Other options: UIkit or Foundation.
Search here in the forum for more info, e.g. this post is helpful.
Cheers, Jannis
inStacks Software