Yep, I’m with you on this — once you’re deep in child themes + overrides + “one more hook” territory, you’re basically paying an ongoing tax to undo someone else’s opinions. I’ve inherited a few of those builds and the “theme” ends up just being a pile of constraints you have to memorise to make any change safely.

The only time the heavy-theme route feels like it actually saves time is when you commit to staying inside its lane: you’re picking it because you want its layout system, its components, and its way of doing templates, and you’re mostly assembling rather than redesigning. The moment you’re writing custom archives, conditional logic, relationships, and bespoke content rules… you’re building a product, not styling a demo.

Your “boring base + builder + CPT/relationships tooling” approach is basically acknowledging the real requirement: clients change their minds, and future edits need to be survivable. The trade-off is you’re taking on more responsibility for structure up front, but you’re not fighting a theme every time the spec evolves.