@Substring I have followed them to the T, even copied and pasted the config found there, but updated it for my network settings. The ifup eth0 && ifdown eth0 works, and gives me the correct IP address. But if I reboot, I'm back at the dynamic IP, no matter what I've tried.

No matter what I've tried, I can NOT set a static IP address.

After remounting / rw.
/etc/network/interfaces:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.2.XX
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.2.1

reboot - DHCP address..
Been at this for hours, where oh where is dhcp configured???