I went for the simplest option

1. Installed a distro (in this case Debian)
2. Installed tailscale on the server, logged in
3. Installed tailscale on my other devices, logged in
4. Used sshfs to mount the desired directory on the server to my client
5. SSH in once a week or so to run updates

Found it very simple. Avoided the tedious setup of samba and samba had weird reliability issues for me when copying large files. Took a bit to learn how ssh works, but very much so worth it.