“Am I cheating” is a good question, and it’s one that many campers have already asked on the forums. Please see this topic for an in-depth discussion, and a quick search will bring up a wealth of other topics from your peers. Please feel free to contribute to any of those.
Taking weeks (or even months depending on how many hours that equates to for you and how fancy you are trying to make it) on a project doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.