so I would like to use wordpress as the structure of my website and it's not necessarily a blog. it may have a news section or something like that but for the most part it'll be a static site. anyone done this before here that wouldn't mind showing me what they've done. I want to see what's been done to get some ideas on the best way to do this.
You would use a combination of Pages - for the "static" content and posts/categories, e.g. for "news".
As for "styling"... you still need to create your own theme.
There are a lot of ezine type themes that organize content a bit differently than out of the box WP. Check out some of those here:
http://www.themeplayground.com/the-best-wordpress-magazine-themes-available
Mimbo and Grid are both free themes; the Revolution series by Brian Gardner and the Premium News theme by Adii cost around $80 USD.
Here's more discussion about "outside the box" themes that you might want to consider for your web site:
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/wordpress/specialty-themes/
HTH.