Alright.

#header {
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
height: 203px;
background-color: #000000;
}
#left {
position: absolute;
left: 0px;
top: 203px;
width: 230px;
background-color: #84000;
}
#center {
top: 0;
margin-left: 230px;
margin-right: 0px;
background-color: #E6D8BC;
}

This is a fairly simple site. I've done things like this before, but I can't figure out why this isn't working.

The header works fine. That's all good and dandy. It's when I get busy with the Left.

For the left, the background color will show up around the filler text i have in it, but it wont fill it. it looks like it's just the background of the filler text instead of the left side...

Maybe it's that 5-digit color code that confuses your browser? It should be either 6 or 3 (when there are three pairs of equal numbers).

i got that part fixed. i had left out a 0. that doesn't fix the problem.

I can't spot anything that could cause it in your css code. Maybe upload a simple html page using that css?