Here’s what I did. Very similar to what your trying. I renamed the wordpress index.php file to index.phpbak. I than renamed my index.html file to index.php. Copied and pasted the index.phpbak info into my body div section of my index.php file.
<div class=”bodytext”>
<?php
/* Short and sweet */
define(‘WP_USE_THEMES’, true);
require(‘./wp-blog-header.php’);
?>
</div>
https://www.pcgurumike.com/
So far it’s been working great. The only thing I’m trying to do now is reposition the Header which was the sidebar info. I really don’t like having it right under my web page banner. Either by making a horizontal links section or moving it under the email image on the right. Hope this might get you going in the right direction.
