I am trying to make it look like a CMS as that's what it is. But I want to prevent it from looking like Joomla or any of the big CMS'es where you get drowned in all of the options your presented with. Too many wizards and too little input.
As for how much work it is, well I'm doing it on my own so in my case it's a 'lot' of work.. but it all depends on what you want to achieve. And being as I get new ideas every single day, it's still a long way to go.