Skinning up your forum is pretty much on you. If you dig around you will find a few very nice skins you can use for free till you get a better solution. You can also get Paint.net for free and edit up any images you want including logos.
As far as which people to get a skin from, your best to check into their reliability because some people are so busy they forget to upgrade or take care of the small things that make your life easy as a admin. Best of luck to you, this is going to be a long couple months for many of us.