I'm not sure I can spare you a body part or two... but I'm a big fan of doing things right (as possible) from the start. It's MUCH cheaper in the long run.
Even for a simple website these days, I'd HIGHLY recommend using a CMS like WordPress. It's free if you're willing to put in a bit of time on learning. Then pick a good template (also many free ones), and most of your design work is done.
At that point, you just have to populate it and *maybe* tweak the template a bit. Or, pay a bit and get a really flexible , professional template like X (by theme.co) from Themeforest.
The big cost is hosting, but if this is purely a hobby site, you can find pricing to match. If it's more than a hobby, go with managed hosting like WP Engine (you'll, again, be really glad you did in the long-run).
The nice thing about using WordPress is that once installed, it's pretty easy to maintain (especially on a managed hosting provider). You're more or less just adding data and graphics from that point on. AND, should you ever want to do more with it, the sky is the limit in terms of expandability (e-commerce? no problem, client portal? no problem, web-gallery? no problem, training materials site? no problem, etc.).
And, finally, it's easy to make Google (and other search engines) like your website. There are SEO plugins (like by Yoast), and WordPress can be made really high performance (and it's not bad out of the box). If you've ever looked at the output of many of the mentioned apps in this thread (and know a bit about it), you'll realize these apps generally write a horrific mess.
If you don't want to get into this stuff yourself, you can easily find good WordPress devs and people to host/manage it (such as myself
). But whether you go with the DIY approach or hire someone.... I strongly recommend starting out right.