I've been in your shoes and ultimately quit for over a decade because I had no-one to bounce ideas off of and trouble-shoot with.
IF you have an LBS, purchase one of their kits, SMaSH would be best. Talk to the person or people working there about your experiences and what you should expect from their kit. Flavor, color, clarity, etc. They are the ones that put it together. Or, if they only sell commercial ones, pick their brains on those.
Get rid of your biggest variable - your water. Without an accurate reading at the point of use, it is a crapshoot. The numbers you see from your local water department are "parameters" generally registered as the water leaves the facility. They can vary greatly based on travel distance, age of the pipe, usage, time of year, etc. Go with 100% distilled and, until you have your water tested, don't use anything else. I personally use only 1/2 gallon of my city's water when making anything other than Porters. (17Ca, 24Mg, 28Na, 51SO4, 83HCO3, and 1.1CO3)
How I got back into homebrewing: Hired a guy into my department who homebrewed (not the reason for the hire). Where I was "slapdash" he was methodical and precise. His mantra was, "water first and last - build your own". After talking with him, doing some brewing, my earlier mistakes were glaring. Literally in this order:
1. Untreated tap water, sometimes directly from my garden hose.
2. My fermentation temps were always guesses on my part. "The house is 68F so my beer must be 68F".
3. Racking 2 gallons of wort, open to the air, into a 5.5 gallon carboy and letting it sit for 3 or 4 weeks. (see number 4)
4. Oxidation, oxidation, oxidation. Get that beast under control as fast as you can.
5. Kits I purchased off the Internet (maybe). This was 1999/2000. Sometimes it would take a week or longer for the kit to reach me. Suffice it to say, the quality of the product was probably not good. If I recall correctly, most yeast came in a plain sachet marked "Beer Yeast".
6. Under pitching yeast.
FWIW, don't give up. It was said multiple times here, find a brew club or talk to people who brew. They will help you in more ways than you can count.
One last thing, temper your expectations with reality.