Okay. I did the quest where I cleared out the skooma dealer then I got permission from the thane to track them down to their cave and I killed everyone there as well. However, I'd cleared the cave before so it didn't progress to the next stage. It just stayed at "Clear Cragskull Cave".

So... I looked up the quest ID and I set the stage to the next part of the quest, which was "return to the thane".

Huge mistake.

I returned, but because I'd used console commands, I never got the option to buy a house or become Thane.

SO... I looked up the quest ID for becoming Riften's Thane FreeFormRiftenThane and set that to 200. Good news, I got the housecarl and the house key. Unfortunately, I cannot decorate the house and it looks like a [censored]hole.

I never unlocked the dialog options for the house improvements. I cannot find a way to get the improvements via console command (though there must be a way) and despite tinkering around, I can't get the Steward to unlock the dialog options necessary.

Any ideas?