IE is a pain, especially because between versions it is inconsistently inconsistent. Unfortunately, this is the reality we live in.

It seems to me you are trying to treat your webpage as print media. I've been trying to do less pixel-pushing recently and write minimal code for positioning, as long as it renders decently across browsers. You'll spend 10% of your time on the initial design and 90% of your time on browser incompatibility if you are determined to make it look exactly the same on all platforms.