I've never used templates. Although my strengths are in development, I've always got the best result from designing everything myself as well.

I've made inquiries with many designers over the last couple years when I wanted something done that was outside of my specialties, but never have I found a good enough designer that was worth paying as apposed to just expanding my skills to do it myself.

The same thing goes for templates. I can't count how many hours I've spent browsing template sites, but in the long run I've always ended up doing everything 100% myself, from scratch.

Good help is always hard to find