Well, I was both programmer and designer, but one day I found:
a) A much better designer than me :-)
b) Money to pay him
c) Many projects that I had to work on, thus limiting my time
So, I decided to dump designing and go on with coding (which is what I like best :-)
That was the time that I realised that templating saved my BIG money (one of my projects wasn't templated.. Believe me, it was the last one I created that way).
Anyway, good luck whichever your choice is.