Well,
"Now then what I have is the pictures of the photos appear in small size in iPhoto but on opening I get a box with dotted lines around but no photo. I'll restore from backup..."
it seems that you've managed to delete or move the
Originals or
Masters folder of the originals from where iPhoto expects to find them, and what you have left are the Thumbnails that iPhoto uses just to display a smaller image of the original photos.
If you still have the appropriate folders you can get them back by relocating them to the proper place, otherwise you'll need to start over using your backups to get the originals back.
You may want to try using some helper app like
iPhoto Library Manager that points iPhoto to the correct iPhoto Libraries.
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7158/iphoto-library-manager
It sounds like you were pretty ruthless with your
cleanup, but if you did your clone properly, it should have kept everything you need. Unless your Trashed and Deleted some required stuff.
That's one reason why Apple hid the Users Library in later OS X versions so that the average user wouldn't do mucking around in there and mess things up. And the iPhoto folders were most vulnerable!!