Id like to add a bar above the forums to eliminate the Topics and Posts headings to the right of each forum to clean up my design. Is this something you can help me with in reformatting the forum.php for simplified #2?
Did I get you right, that you want to show the current Forum Topics and Posts count on the Category tab?
The gray bar in the screenshot is just the headings for the columns under them the forum name, topic, post number, and last post appear as the do under the bar. I want to eliminate the UI of seeing "posts" and "topics" headings in each row.
Here is another screenshot of what I am trying to do. I have attached a screenshot of the main forum home and then the topics page.
I'm sorry but I cannot help you with that, as it is layout customization including PHP. I can help with CSS codes, but not theme Customization... You can do it yourself or hire a Dev for that kind of changes. Or at least use another layout, wpForo has 4 of them.
Doc about theme Customizations: https://wpforo.com/docs/wpforo-v2/forum-themes/theme-customization/