The style looks fine to me, I'm just wondering why you have a set mind on having a centrerd white box like the last design. Have you experimented with contiuous headers and a more fit width style? Sometime the simpler the body style is the more you've got to work with. Setting a white box means the shape of the site is always going to be boxy and won't be able to vary on different pages, it adds contrainst if you get what I mean.
A few examples of what I mean:
Devlounge : Design, Develop, and Grow
Technorati: Front Page
paulbeelen.com
frilans, frilansade, Webb/Ad, webbdesinger Thomas Krajewski - Springbeat
Moderní web: top českého a slovenského webdesignu
Once you 'box' a user in you limit what you can design with the main content, hope this makes sense.