CTR Potential vs Visual Aesthetics

I am just about finishing up on my new niche sites.

There is only ONE other site doing what I am doing. That site is run by some random guy and its just a 10 page site that he whipped together in probably a few days using a 45$ theme forest generic portfolio/magazine theme.

He has 2 pages ranked on the top 10 so the competition is fairly weak.

All other sites are weak e-commerce, forums or yahoo answers

My site was originally made purely for adsense but I actually found a few e-commerce sites offering affiliate programs for the products I promote. (amazon doesnt sell this stuff)

Im using this theme: ProSense Grey

and my site structure is kind of like this: Find the Best Survival Knife for You | BestSurvivalKnifeGuide.com

After briefly scanning other themes I noticed even with the twenty fourteen theme I could make my site so much more crisp and visually appealing but its not designed for adsense, however you can stick adsense on anything I suppose.

heres an example of a twenty fourteen theme: DCCollectors.com | Your Source for DC Comics News

For people that have done this before what makes more money? High CTR themes that look lame or crisp appealing themes with poorly optimized adsense?

I will test it but id rather not have to re-align 20 pages of images and text in a few months if I decided to change themes.