It's hard when we have a vision of something and we don't quite reach it. It's one of the ways I score my projects, sometimes a close but not quite is worse than a complete miss. While you aren't appreciating the "checkerboard" effect and you were expecting a lattice setting the two are so radically different that maybe you can grow to appreciate the difference.
And there are some things that are just going to bug us, for me the border difference is something I can live with because the only time I will really notice it is when I fold the quilt up. But I have some tiny little piddling things that annoy me in some of my projects and even when I point them out, other people don't see what I'm talking about.
I think you are just a bit too close to the project right now. Put it away in a closet for about 3 months and try not to think about it and then pull it out. If you still hate it and will never use it, then change it or give it or do something. Also think about if you had never seen it and if your aunt showed you the top because it is how she ended up having it done -- would you love it then or still hate it? lol, you are allowed to still hate it, just a question to ask yourself.