I love the idea of starting fresh although I have to say that I've never pulled the trigger on doing it. I wish I had done it on the E21 and may still especially now that the CIS is gone.
You seem really good at planning things out and executing but that would be my only suggestion. Don't let what can be a complicated process of designing circuits, physical running of the wires, etc. push actually driving the thing too far down the road.
So far the only harnesses I've built from scratch were for bare bones motorcycles. Not much to those circuits compared to a car, but I feel like if I just do one circuit at a time it seems well within reach and maybe less scary. It's also on the list of things I'd like to do so skipping that process seems like chance for regret. In the meantime I think using what I have to test out systems may be the move.
In reply to captainawesome :
A 914 isn't much more than a motorcycle. Just twice as many lights...