I don't think that would've been a good idea. I guess it's possible, but I'd rather trade known obstacles versus unknown obstacles (that will definitely exist).

I said "torn down and built back up" in an endearing way. Sure it was difficult work at times, but it was super fun and we would spend 2 days at a time fixing it until something popped up 6 months later.

But the amount of stuff I learned from that was (I will wager) exponentially more useful than figuring out how to adapt/run a fairly major FOSS.