My current plan is to go “Home Depot fancy”- stock cabinets, cheap granite counters, the cheapest stainless steel appliances I can get at a scratch and dent, vinyl plank flooring (other option is to refinish the hardwoods),and wood look porcelain tile in the baths.

This is what every guru (amazon drop ship, real estate, stock trader trainer, etc...) says, right? 

Drive down streets with dead ends.

Like reinvesting dividends instead of spending it on stocks.

rat poising....mixed in peanut butter i promis in 5 days there all dead...then you gotta clean it up

But with that also comes this feeling that because homeownership isn't working out for me I want NOTHING to do with real estate, entrepreneurship, investing (a lot of these people also failed at RE investing and the stock market).

The rational is the same as switching more stocks to bonds as you get older, you have a lower risk profile because you don't have the time to make it up.

This project could be dead in the water already, I'm not sure what my partner and his contractor were smoking when they thought this house was only a 90-100k reno. 

I would advise him to invest that money in the stock market.  

I would stay away from wholesale or discount stores, they only sell items for short periods of time and will run out of stock.