Hey don’t worry, code is just a bunch of stuff that either works or doesn’t – and yours now works.
what I couldn’t figure out was why the sidebar was showing, and now that you’ve posted the footer.php I can see why. Strange bit of theme coding to put the sidebar in a footer.php but there are only conventions not rules. All you’ve done by deleting the footer line is stop the sidebar running, which is what you wanted.
The fact that I changed your code also is worrying me since I have absolutely no knowledge about php coding. I mean, I’ve found out there is a something called php coding.
Don’t worry you’ve done nothing wrong, it’s all good.
NOW the only thing you’ll need to do is make a note of all the changes you made. Themes sometimes have updates, and these may overwrite existing files, and in your case may also delete the bbpress.php. So keep copies of any files you have changed or added on your PC.