Finally got a chance to visit Monticello a few years ago. Was surpirsed how by cramped it looked on the inside. After taking the tour, seeing his gadgets, and learning about how he lived day to day, I went away convinced that he was a bit of a crackpot.
But he did believe in States Rights and that's what always sells me on Jefferson.
He was much more modest than Washington.
Paul Johnson in A History of the American People gives evidence:
"Unfortunately, his divided nature, the simultaneous existence in his personality of incompatible opposites, his indecisiveness, his open-mindedness and changeability, combined to turn his building activities, especially at Monticello, into a nightmare saga...
Almost from the start, the house was lived in, and guests invited there, though it was, by grandee standards, uninhabitable. When Jefferson became president, work on the house had proceeded for over thirty years, but half the rooms were unplastered and many had no flooring. One guest, Anna Maria Thornton, was surprised to find the upper floor reached by 'a little ladder of a staircase...very steep' (it is still there). On the second floor, where she slept, the window came down to the ground so there was no privacy but it was so short she had to crouch to see the view. The entrance hall had a clock perched awkwardly over the doorway, driven by cannon-ball weights in the corners, and with a balcony jutting out the back...
The chimneys proved too low and blew smoke into the house; the fires smoked too and gave out little heat. Jefferson was too jealous of Count Rumford's fame to install a 'Rumford,' the first really elegant drawing-room fireplace, so much admired by Jane Austen. He insisted on producing his own design, which did not work."
More examples are given.