Inserting a blank table row with a smaller height

Just add the CSS rule (and the slightly improved mark-up) posted below and you should get the result that you’re after.

CSS

.blank_row
{
    height: 10px !important; /* overwrites any other rules */
    background-color: #FFFFFF;
}

HTML

<tr class="blank_row">
    <td colspan="3"></td>
</tr>

Since I have no idea what your current stylesheet looks like I added the !important property just in case. If possible, though, you should remove it as one rarely wants to rely on !important declarations in a stylesheet considering the big possibility that they will mess it up later on.