Are you trying to set up tabular data? If so then everything should be contained within the appropriate columns in the table and you should have a table header row and table caption that identifies what the table is about.
If you are trying to position things on your web page then you should not use tables because they are only for tabular data display. Istead you should use stylesheet commands to position everything on your page where you want it.
I think that you can get pretty creative with tables and borders, and Mark Lee isn't asking anything that is too extreme. I thing that the following is an example of what Mark Lee is asking about. The light colored division lines are an artifact of this forum and the code doesn't inlude them. But they actually serve to illustrate the structure an little better. If you put it in a test page, the light colored internal bordering won't show.
This is a Table
Table Entry 1
Table Entry 2
Table Entry 3
Table Entry 1
Table Entry 2
Table Entry 3
I included inline styling to make it easier to see the structure, but it would be better to convert to CSS. The code for the table is below. Make adjustments as you see fit.