Tables

Hi! i am starting with wordpress and I am haviung such an headache with tables.
I understand for this purpose we do have many plugins which I do have already in my wordpress, the thing is that many ( tiny tabel, mce buttons, wp table) do not appear on my editor, and the one I am trying to use does not help me.
What I am trying to do is to have a table with two columns, column at the left an image, column at the right with six rows each one of the rows with a link and I which to have a backroundcolor for each one of the rows…. I can’t get that.
On the other hand whenever I insert a table it goes wherever it wants to go it is really hard to align it where I do want it.