Sorry for the late reply and thank you for answering my question.  I went through the tutorial again and I don't think I missed anything.  The solution that worked is that I put a links module of the left side of the page, underneath the House Menu, and it stretched out the menu gradient to the full width of the color as evident cell (this being evident by the black border that I had set on the heightest level table).  Having the LInks module under the menu stretched the gradient to the full width of the left pane and the menu appeared as intended.

Thanks again,
Altein