Yeah, make your own desktop environment on top of a window manager.
I'm using xmonad, for example, which is a tiling window manager
(Note, that WM in particular requires the haskell compiler and all that jazz, so, not recommended for a 'small footprint' installation, cause boy is the haskell suite HUGE).
What that means is that every window that is opened (with the exception of, things like 'floating' windows (user preference) is automatically put into a dynamic layout.
If you opened two windows, then you might have them split 50/50, or 75/25, while using as much space as possible.
Often these WMs are controlled by the keyboard and not the mouse (but the mouse usually works, too) and do away with things like window title bars.
So, for information, you use an infobar like "dzen2" (there are many, I use dzen2), which is then populated with info you want.
I set mine up like this:
https://i.imgur.com/RbnP79Y.jpg
On the very left, I see the 9 workspaces I have in xmonad, some I gave special icons, and they have little squares at them when focused.
(They also change color to yellow if an important background event happened in a workspace that is not currently on any monitor)
To the right of that, is the name of the window manager layout. In this case it's 'tabbed simplest' I dont think it's an official name, but it really is the simplest form of 'tabbed' windows xmonad has, I think.
With this layout, there is only one window visible at a time, and it's fullscreen, and I tab to others with the keyboard.
To the right of that, and ending the section that my WM is supplying, info wise, is the title of the currently focused window.
Then to the right of that (there's a bit of a gap to allow for longer titles), begins the 'conky' section.
Conky is a general system information provider, and I'm piping the following into dzen2:
Uptime, cpu and memory usage (clicking those (for my tablet) opens several system tools, like htop, etc), up and download speed, the date and clock, the output of a weather script, and a little script for emails, showing how many new ones I have in the box I care the most about.
(Most of these entries also have a 'click' function, like showing timezones of friends, mail client, etc)
Then dzen2 ends and trayer (a system tray bar) follows seamlessly due to the same color scheme and dimensions.
I have pidgin, a messenger running, as well as an RSS reader.
I also have a slew of hotkeys set up to do all sorts of things. Launching programs with dmenu (it's a fuzzy search 'direct by name' selection tool that can be used for a lot of things, including launching programs).
Opening some applications directly, text editor, mail, browser,terminal, etc.
It all might seem daunting at first, but if you chip away at this, slowly, then you will (most likely) end up with something incredibly cozy...that makes using anything else a chore :P
But yeah, it takes a while to get around, I went through several window managers and even desktop environments until I settled, but in a VM that's less of a pain than on an actual installation.
I find it quite rewarding, and I'm not even that big of a 'ricer' (someone who preens and skins and beautifies everything).
Oh, of course I also have desktop backgrounds, I set those with 'feh' a rather simplistic image viewer (and I don't really like, but it does this task how I want it.).
Caveat:
Some (maybe all of them) window managers, that is not going for a premade desktop environment, are without a 'compositor'. A compositor, in my case compton, does things like shadows on windows and other such effects, as well as doing v-sync to prevent screen tearing.
For notifications I use dunst, which is sleek and looks pretty (imho) most applications hook right into it, and for scripts and co, inotify-send "message" does the trick.
So yeah, again, I've used Linux for years now, the most important thing is probably to 'let go' a bit and experiment a little. It's not required, ready made DEs can be really good (I enjoyed XFCE quite a bit) but nothing beats this for me now.
Unless I find something better.
So yeah, can be quite rewarding. Your very own flavor DE, made from bits and pieces to, hopefully, satisfaction and specifications.