Hi jman12,

Yes you are re-inventing the wheel so to speak. There was a recent thread regarding serial interfaces for LCDs. I have purchased a number of 9600 and 2400 interfaces from www.wulfden.org. Very inexpensive. They come in kit form (I love building things!) and also have 1x14 and 2x7 pinouts and they handle up to 20x4 screens.

HTH
BobK