Hello.
You should wrap the 'left-bar' div into the following condition so that it does not show up at the home page
Code:
{if $main eq 'catalog' and $cat neq 0}
... left bar code ...
{/if}
There will be a big white space at the left side of the page, which you will easily remove by adjusting the margin property of the #center-main div using CSS (/skin/light_responsive/css/altskin.css file)