You might try restarting.
I tried several times - didn't work.
Have you moved the location of your Home folder?
No
Did you create a second Home folder, then chose the wrong one to open?
No
There is some disconnect on your system. Changing the name of your Home folder shouldn't cause such a change.
Might be something else?
Your second article link does offer more than one possible solution. Read it again.
One guy says something irrelevant and the guy who posted it says support solved it for him, but he doesn't say exactly how. Am I missing something else?
I tried one more thing and it solved PART of the problem: Now the folders look ok, but the b/w ones on the sidebar still look generic. How I did it: I created a dummy user account and copied the images from the dummy account's folders. It had to be done in two steps. 1. Log in as the dummy and copy the folder images to new folders, and 2. Log in as me and copy the images from the new folders to my own. For those who do not know, folder icons can be copied by the "Get Info" window, from the small icon that appears on the top left corner. Open the Get Info windows of the source and destination folders, click the source's top-left icon and press command-C, then click the destination's top-left icon and press command-V.