~coding layouts are all s1 layouts, and you have to assign #fff to certain parts, i.e the background, certain accents. i'm not much of a layout coder, just a tweaker, but if you leave one of the accents blank, you should be able to have the top part without a background. for some reason, it doesn't work all the time??
as for putting custom quotes/design into the top, you have to work with display:none so the default things don't show up, i.e. userinfo link, friends link. generally, people who use ~coding layouts do a lot of tweaking. if you need something specific in a layout, you could always right click and "inspect element"? it's a bit finicky if you don't know where to click, but it's helped me in the past!