WordPress customization and upgrade

I am currently starting up the site [login to view URL] and have purchased a theme called CoPilot from ThemeForest. I like the theme as it stands however there are a few things i need customised, and if they are unable to be for a decent price i may have to get a new theme, possibly custom but basically, i like the way it displays the new posts and shows their types as well as share buttons etc but it lacks some functionality such as the ability to have a seperate page where all other posts show as i only want articles with category news on the front page, but i want all other posts to have the same format just with other categories. So basically, i'd like the home page to be how it is currently, however only displaying things in the category news. And i want another page, a blog page, exactly the same layout and format as the home page that displays all other posts that arent in news. Hope that makes sense. The theme also doesnt support custom plugin css as can be seen from the left hand side and the social widget, ive tried 2 and both seem to not like to be displayed properly, after contacting one of the plugin devs they said it was most likely a problem with custom css support and when i went in and changed some of the css rules, i found it to be the case. Also i'm having some trouble displaying adsense ads using text widgets in the side bars. A blank box will appear in IE but in chrome it is blank? I've used adsense on a couple of sites but never had this issue before. Lastly, in IE, im not sure if its just my version of a known problem but some things, such as the footer and where it says follow everything about the social plugin are a bit strange. The theme currently is very basic and has no page templates or anything, so there may be work in the future, but at the moment i only need this basic functionality. I'm not sure how much work this project takes but whenever i do need work i tend to use the same people over and over. Let me know if more details required.