LOL, the money pit sounds like an interesting project, hopefully you made some money along the way.
I still deal with the occasional aluminum wired house but they were never that popular in New England for whatever reason. There’s a great sense of satisfaction ripping out knob and tubing, BX, aluminum, etc and cleaning up older homes and bringing them into the 21st Century.
Where the code says #14 is ok; I use #12.
The cost difference isn’t that much and I can’t accidently use 14 for a 12 circuit if I don’t have any around!