I'm using Joomla to build a web site at the moment and had to learn how to use it from scratch. If you want to do a lot with the site but still use a straightforward CMS, it is actually really amazing. You can add any number of user-built add-ons, and there are literally thousands of free templates to get you started.
I would recommend looking through
this page, and possibly downloading a couple of the guides. The thing I love most about using it is you no longer have to worry about linking up all your pages, nor about the most basic things that you can miss when coding by hand. I used to code by hand, and while you have a lot of control, the time you waste is just not worth it. Of course, you can still tweak the HTML and CSS pages to your liking.
If all you want it a blog though, Wordpress might work best for you.
I am building a
rather silly little web site right now on Joomla. It's far from finished (hell, it's barely even started), but you can get an idea of how customizable a page can be. The page is based on a template, but doesn't actually look much like the template any more.
Best of luck with it!