Multiple menus in multiple 'sidebars'?

I’m hacking apart a custom theme a friend of mine found and I’m hoping someone can either answer the following or point me in the right direction so I can answer it myself.

Essentially the finished theme will be a ‘3 row’ theme – a header element with various clickable elements, the center content area where posts, page content, etc will show up, and a footer area with more clickable nav elements.

What I’m wondering is if there is a way to define multiple sidebars, like, 7 or more. I’d like two in the top bar / header (one on each side of the logo) and then the remaining 5 in the bottom/footer. This way my friend can use the dashboard’s custom menu-building functions and sidebar building functions to change elements around as he likes, rather than having to find me or someone else to change a hard-coded implementation.

I’m not really what I would call ‘proficient’ in wordpress theme design, but I have done it to limited success before, and I am decently proficient with php.

I’ve already re-arranged the header with hard-coded menus / blurbs the way he wants, but then I realized I should be making it dynamic to really make it a proper wordpress theme.