I really like the Twitter Bootstrap. I am also no good at design, but with it I was able to get something that I liked up fairly quickly. It is probably this easy with other grid systems, but I liked the info on the bootstrap page.

Cool, I'll check those out! Any tips on software and hardware to roll my own? Do professional web designers use Wacom tablets or other specific hardware?

I'm a professional web designer. I spend 95% of my working time typing in Vim and refreshing Chrome. =)

Wacom tablets are generally for illustrators, not web designers. Freehand drawings do not map well to the rectangular web.

What do you use for images? Take your own or source somewhere?

What software do you use to lay things out correctly?

As a programmer, how do I best prepare a html page for a designer? Is putting everything in a div with a unique id enough?

Images: usually client provided, or none. Stock photography is awful in general.

Layout: Content is divided into columns. Twelve colums, six colums, and three columns are the usual suspects.

Preparing HTML for a designer: Use semantic HTML. For anything that's even vaguely list-related, use <ul>. Do not put links in a div by themselves, but sort them into a structured list. Do not use <br> for paragraphs.

I don't know if anyone uses tablets. I'd say start simple :-) Also, there's a thread like this on HN every few days. So, search around a bit.