Here's what I was after, guys.  Created this from another software's tut.  Had a few problems early on, like with the selections, and then making the holes.  The tutorial in question was using "inset" to create the latticework from the criss-crossed edges, then delete the inner faces, leaving behind only the cage you see here.  But our inset tool in Blender wasn't doing the job in the same way as the tutorial app for some reason, on all the faces at once.  They were using a type of "inset individual".  Our inset seems to only work on regions?

So my solution here was to bevel the edges first, then delete the inner faces, then create thickness on the resulting cage. Oh, and I after I selected all the edges at the very top that I wanted in the previous post, I applied a "flatten" operation from the Loop Tools, which made all those jabby parts flat!  I think the results are the same as the one in the tutorial, just a few more steps to get there.  I'm proud of it though. I learned the edge turning trick from following that fancy window tutorial in my other thread.  That came in handy for creating this model too.

Thanks for all the help once again, guys!  I'm becoming more and more confident with my skill in Blender, thanks to all of you!