Newbie: How to remove the bars.
 

I have two gray bars, I am not sure if they originate in the header or in the centre. Regardless, I cannot find where to change or delete them. I have set the settings for bar1% and bar2% to white thinking that they be the culprits but no luck.

The bars appear underneath the header image and span the width of the screen.

You can see them here
http://www.torontocranks.com

they are part of the page background ATO->Body, Text & Links->Body Style

That is actually a background image. You can remove that part of the code by looking in the theme options/Body, Text and Links/Body Style. Look for:

and remove everything except the color.

Once again, I'm stepping on Juggledad's toes!

Am I the only one who thinks this is unnecessarily obscure? I'm very familiar with the theme after using various versions of it for a long time, but I had to really look for this setting. It's just not obvious, and I doubt many users are going to want to keep that image.

Much better, I think, would be to have no background image as the default, but make it easy to upload one.

Paula, we think alike - I just put an item in the 'To Do for 3.5.2' to go back to teh 'classic' style for new installs

I second that. Those bars were confusing and I thought it was part to the header settings. Glad this issue has been addressed here.

I'm all for changing it also. Thought I was going crazy looking for it. Glad I wasn't the only one.

I also have two horizontal black bars sandwiching my header (www.healthyfoodforliving.com) and for some reason the instructions below did not work for me. Any thoughts on how to get rid of the bars?

That question is answered in the FAQ thread.

I actually liked it. I used the background image from the install, then changed it and saved it as something different. If it hadn't have been there to alter, I don't know how long it might have taken me to make my own custom background and it probably would have ended up far more basic than the one I've got now.