Hi Deb,
If you check that test listing of the new template, you should see the gray background is now filling to near the page width.
ebay just made a change to using a 100% dimensioned table in the IFRAME (codeset now seems close or match to the Sandbox for fans of that realm). That means backgrounds on the description section, like wallpaper and colors, should be page-width (or close).
Let's hope this toss of the spaghetti sticks to the eBay fridge (and they stop using the coolaid dispenser in their cafe).
Having some other confirmations that paste to the editor in HTML mode not always gets a correct result (corruption on paste vs. original codeset), so that might explain the "wrap problem" on the table cells.
Danno