Q:

Creating a single column page layout in SharePoint 2010

I have been grappling with this seemingly basic task for the past hour and getting increasingly frustrated. 
I have created a basic SharePoint site which by default gives me a left and right column, I want the left column to span 100% percent with no right hand column. I am not trying to hide the left menu - this is fine as it is.
I wrongly assumed SharePoint would offer some sort of "Choose your site layout" screen which allows you to choose, 1 column, 2 column, 3 column etc - but it seems not.
Any web searches I do are telling me to include JavaScript code etc etc - I can't believe this is such a hard to accomplish task??! 
Where am I going wrong?

A:

I accomplished this by: 

Opening SharePoint designer
Loading the site 
Going to 'Site Pages'
New > 'Web Part page'
From here you can select the page layout you want (one of the options being single column)

