A time guide for anyone looking to implement something similar:
Total time taken: 36 hours
This should be an upper bound for anyone looking to replicate since I have no experience in any of the languages and implemented several customisations.
This site is based on the jekyllDecent theme by Jens Willmer. The header navigation and idea of social icons were taken from modified segments of http://willkoehler.net by Will Koehler. His blog is helpful too.
jekyllDescent is a blog template for a static site generator named Jekyll based on a Ghost template named Decent.
Installation instructions, features, previews and more can be found in the GitHub generated blog.