Hi Ashley,
You could potentially fake it by creating a custom page template and then using the theme grid to get the same layout. Its not a true portfolio post type and won't have the same meta fields but it will give you the basic layout. It'll take some digging through the theme files however so if you aren't comfortable with php/css I would recommend looking into a freelance web developer.
See:http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages#Creating_Your_Own_Page_Templates and look specifically at the page.php for how the theme framework calls a basic page. You can edit out a lot of the php variable options and hard code in your own container sizes uses the grid formatting the portfolio uses.
@Chris,
I'll do my best to answer here but in the future if you could create a new post for this long of a question it will help keep things more organized and we'll be able to get back quicker :)
1) There seems to be an empty text widget at the top of the sidebar on http://www.iamanalogue.com/processing so removing that should get rid of the space. If this isn't what you mean, can you point me to the correct error in a screenshot perhaps.
2) Try adding the following CSS to your Quick CSS (located under the Styling Tab in the theme options) or the custom.css file in the css folder of your theme files:
#top.page .sidebar .inner_sidebar {
padding-left: 0px;
}
Depending on what else you want, you can target the individual items with the same css followed by the individual selector. Example for the H1 title:
#top.page .sidebar .inner_sidebar h1 {
margin:0px;
padding0px;
}
Regards,
Devin