I'm having trouble with a multi-layout option on a wordpress theme sight http://sight.wpshower.com/

the traffic have the option of a grid or a list layout at the click of a button. at present the list layout is default. I am interested in making the grid layout default .

this is some of the php, i tried simply swapping the word grid for list but although this does work to an extent , if done on the loop.php page it removes the a:hover functions on the post boxes in the grid format. also if done on the index.php it switches buttons on the main index page.

any ideas??

loop.php

   <div id="loop" class="<?php if ($_COOKIE['mode'] == 'grid') echo 'grid'; else     echo 'list'; ?> clear"> 

     <?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

        <div <?php post_class('post clear'); ?> id="post_<?php the_ID(); ?>">
        <?php if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) :?>
        <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" class="thumb"><?php the_post_thumbnail('thumbnail', array(
                    'alt'   => trim(strip_tags( $post->post_title )),
                    'title' => trim(strip_tags( $post->post_title )),
                )); ?></a>
        <?php endif; ?> 

        <div class="post-category"><?php the_category(' / '); ?></div>
        <h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

     <!--   <div class="post-meta">by <span class="post-author"><a
                href="<?php echo get_author_posts_url(get_the_author_meta('ID')); ?>" title="Posts by <?php the_author(); ?>"><?php the_author(); ?></a></span>
                               on <span
                    class="post-date"><?php the_time(__('M j, Y')) ?></span> <em>&bull; </em><?php comments_popup_link(__('No Comments'), __('1 Comment'), __('% Comments'), '', __('Comments Closed')); ?> <?php edit_post_link( __( 'Edit entry'), '<em>&bull; </em>'); ?>  
        </div>  -->  

<?php edit_post_link( __( 'Edit entry'), '<em>&bull; </em>'); ?>

 <div class="post-content"><?php if (function_exists('smart_excerpt')) smart_excerpt(get_the_excerpt(), 55); ?></div>
    </div>

  <?php endwhile; ?>

   </div>

        <?php endif; ?>

index.php

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div class="content-title">
Projects
<a href="javascript: void(0);" id="mode"<?php if ($_COOKIE['mode'] == 'grid') echo ' class="flip"'; ?>></a>
</div> 

 <?php query_posts(array(
    'post__not_in' => $exl_posts,
    'paged' => $paged,
)
 ); ?>

 <?php get_template_part('loop'); ?>

<?php wp_reset_query(); ?>

<?php get_template_part('pagination'); ?>

 <?php get_footer(); ?>