Update w/reponsive theme v. starting from scratch.

Hi.

I’m going through fits. I have a WP blog that is about 5 or 6 years old. I want to migrate it to a responsive theme that looks like a regular website (instead of a blog) but has an integrated blog link in it.

I have found a couple of different themes I like (Minimize & Spacious), but am having a terrible time customizing them, mainly because my blog is live so I can’t create test pages to use with them without making them live on my blog, and I can’t seem to get at least a front page that looks like the demo.

Am I fighting an uphill battle? Is it just easier to start from scratch on a wp site that is not live, has nothing, rather than converting my site which has tons of content? If so, is there a way to transfer the content from my old blog to my new blog if I get that t work?

Thanks for any input you can give would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Caat