SEO Advice - Wordpress

I know that are a lot of very knowledgeable members that post here and I am looking for some input. I apologize if this is not the correct forum or if this post is to irrelevant to even be posted here at all. I wasn't sure where to post it. If that's the case, I apologize and a moderator can delete it. However, everyone here has been so helpful in the past so I thought I would give it a shot. I also seem to remember someone on here doing something similar so here goes.

I am thinking strongly of making my entire site revolve around wordpress. In the past, I've had my main site with news links and sub pages of content that I have created. I have also had a separate blog in the blog subdirectory.

Recently, I've realized how easy it is to use wordpress for custom pages. I think it would be much easier to use this as a CMS for my site than coding each page separately. That's one big reason for considering the switch. I think page management of existing pages would be easier also.

In the past, I have used header and sidebar includes that keep a common theme so that design changes are a bit easier. However, I think using wordpress would take that a step further and make any site design changes seamless. That's another big reason for considering the move.

Also, with my recent focus on using the blog, I feel that I am trying to promote two sites. I have my main root site and then the blog. I don't know if that's really necessary.

If my main page is a PR5 and my blog page is PR5 does it hurt me in any way to 301 redirect the blog directory to the main directory? What is the code for that?

Also, several of my static pages will be redone within wordpress. I assume as long as I keep the same page names I will be ok there.

I guess I will have to change the rss feeds within feedburner that I use also.

Any other thoughts tips or suggestions from anyone who had done this? Are there any drawbacks that I am not considering?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Ok, admitted, that was probably way too long of a question.

Let me ask this. Is it possible to do a rewrite to forward and entire directory except for one file. I would like to forward domain.com/blog to domain.com but keep domain.com/index.php in place. Could that work?