Remove posts from home page

Hello,

I updated the theme today and lost a ton of work I had done to customize the look of my site. I can’t remember if it was an original part of the theme or if I edited it myself, but before posts would never show up on my homepage below the widget area. Now either posts show up or it says “nothing found”. How can I undo this?

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

*edit — I was able to figure out how to get no posts to show up, but now there is a big gap under the widget bar between it and the footer. I would like to get rid of this.