Thanks again @Niels Lyngsø for your response on the forum. You know in your comment and just from reading several various READMEs on the Umbraco docs, I often see a friendly nudge to STAY AWAY from modifying the original source / trying to build the source from scratch. How come? I know Umbraco is a mature product that has been around for years... I'm guessing the avoidance of headaches when trying to build?
I tried to build from source and it went rather smoothly... I'm guessing it wasn't always like that. 🙂 Sorry, still an Umbraco noob.