A couple of days ago I started using Menufela to hide my menu bar and Camouflage to hide my icons. My dock is also set to autohide. I now have a pristine, blank desktop image, with Quicksilver if I need to open anything.
Not bad, actually I read the note that said it can't handle any more icons than that....so what happens when you have a bunch of apps open that aren't already in the dock? I guess that doesn't happen often?