from Red Hat Linux 8.0: The Official Red Hat Linux Customization Guide
It is important that you begin a kernel build with the source tree in a known condition. Therefore, it is recommended that you begin with the command make mrproper. This will remove any configuration files along with the remains of any previous builds that may be scattered around the source tree.
One would think that because it was a fresh install of the kernel-source you would not need mrproper, BUT ...

Never had these problems with Linus's kernels

also, I didn't notice it before but in step e of my above post, the word processor seems to have altered it a bit, should be
find . -name '*.rej' -print