Honestly, what you described is exactly why - the various pieces that make up "Khoros Communities" were all built up over the past decade - Often by different teams, during different strategies that Lithium/Khoros has gone through over the years. To their credit, a lot of this is was built before modern web/design principals existed. There is a lot of work underway I know towards future enhancements, but in the short-term you don't have a ton of great options beyond rebuilding a lot of the core functionality or doing your best as you said with restyling it.
We've been slowly rebuilding pieces over the past 6-9 months, but it is honestly a struggle because some elements/features simply work different between the node types, and aligning everything is dang near impossible.
