Wallpaper Issues

[freightdog]

I installed the Cairo dock and wanted to get rid of the taskbar on the left side. Found out that getting rid of Mutter would do that. Not satisfied, so long story short, reinstalled Mutter. Now I only get a white screen. No wallpaper, colors, themes, nothing. As I shut Ubuntu off I will get a flash of my wallpaper and then it's gone. 2 questions really: How do I get things back the way they were? Can I keep the dock but lose the standard sidebar? Probably should have asked this first before I screwed with things. Thx.

[freightdog]

Actually, turns out that it's Unity which gives the annoying sidebar, and the lack of Unity is what gave me the white screen. So I'm back to where I started, and wondering how I can get rid of the top and side bars in order to maximize my screen my screen size. I've seen shots of clear screens and would like to be like the cool kids. Thx.