walkaflock on "Changing Width of text column, and deleting starter post?"

Certainly, delete the "Hello World" and "Sample Page" post and page.

From settings->reading, you can state whether you want your front page to be a page or a list of posts, and state how many posts go on that page if you choose that option.

Changing the color is a matter of CSS.

Around line 23 of your theme's style.css, it says

div.tempo-website-wrapper div#tempo-page.tempo-page { background-color: #ffffff;
}

Rather than update that file directly, install the plugin "simple custom CSS" and put in CSS to override that

div.tempo-website-wrapper div#tempo-page.tempo-page { background-color: #020406;
}

or some rationally chosen color code :-)