When making a website, customize WordPress themes instead of building WordPress themes from scratch.
This will save you a lot of time, and help you achieve the most important part of any work: delivery on time. Developing the theme is where most of the time is spent on any website project. This is also probably the cause of most of the delays. Customize WordPress themes that are already available for sale or free, instead of creating them from scratch. This will avoid pretty much all of your delays.
When the wheel exists, why reinvent it? When you are working on a commercial project for a client, they want they work done well and they want it done fast. They do not care if you customize wordpress themes or hand-coded it, as long as it gives them what they want. No website should be made anymore that is not responsive. For that, you are probably already using a framework like bootstrap or foundation or many others. This saves so much time, as once you’ve learnt it, you can go crazy with it without spending too much time on it. The client’s are also in many cases familiar with these frameworks, so they do not have to be taught how to use them(for the most part).
The quality of available commercial themes available for WordPress has increased rapidly in the last few years. The support is fast and helpful as well. WordPress themes also get regular updates, meaning it will be use-able for many years to come. Whatever you need in a theme, somebody already has it for sale. We build websites on WordPress for reasons like saving time and having a dependable CMS that always works and can pretty much do whatever we need it to do. Customizing themes is one way to follow that.