I actually went through the same thing! I was also working on a voxel engine a good few years ago and when going through all the ways of turning voxels into meshes I invented my own version of marching cubes as well.

When I finally found the right search terms to Google on the issues I ran into I came across the real marching cubes algorithm and was actually happy I figured out most of it on my own. A good boost for my self-confidence. The fact that the patent just had ran out was nice as well.

If you scroll to the end of this page you can see some screenshots: http://github.com/aerique/okra