New to theme design

Hello,

I’ve fairly new to word press but decided I wanted to go full swing into things and design my own theme. Considering I am fresh meat are their steps I should take to creating the theme? Like write the css file before doing the templates visa versa? Could someone explain to me the steps they take in constructing a theme?

I have in mind the basic structure for the site. How I would like it to look. I’m trying to gauge also how many template files I need to create. I want to have two sidebars one for either side. So far I figure I’ll have the following templates: header, footer, sidebar, and sidebar_left, and index, 404, page, single.

Also, would anyone be willing to be a mentor of sorts? I have a bunch of questions and need a bit of guidance. I have down on paper how I want the front end building blocks to look. Still stuck in the dirt as far as fonts and colors go. Ideally I’d like to have a navigation bar in the middle of the page right below the header. Is anyone familiar with multiple blog rolls also? I’d like to have a blog roll per catagory.

Sincerely,
Alex