4th Avenue

So, I'm sitting at the table signing my life away with my real estate agent to my left and the pen in my right hand for which I had no idea what I was about to get into.  I was 25 years old and a year and a half out of college.  I just started my second year teaching in the Cohoes City School District.  I'm buying my first house for $80,000. It's a 3 unit fixer-upper on 4th Ave in Lansingburgh.  I've always been interested in real estate and the next 3 years would surely be an education to the start of my journey.  Closing day was on Halloween and I was so excited (or nervous depending, on how you look at it).  I drove straight from the closing table to the house ready to get to work.  I had my DIY book in hand with a handful of tools because out of the 3 apartments, there wasn't 1 that was complete and ready to live in.  I remember having to go outside and into the front door for the front apartment in order to use the shower because mine had a hole in the tube that went straight to the basement.  But that wasn't the chore for today! I was going to fix the leaky sink in the upstairs apartment. I had read all about it so... what could go wrong? ​

I marched upstairs, turned the water off to the house, and cut the pipe right out just like the book told me to do.  There was no shut off valve in the bathroom so I had to buy one to put in and turn off the main valve to the house.  I had all of the materials and was ready to sweat on the shut off valve. The only problem was that the shut off valve wouldn't stay on.  So I take the piece of pipe and head off to Home Depot.  I showed the employee what I did and explained to him what I did and he looked at me and said "the pipe is cast iron and you can't solder copper to cast iron" (who knew??).  He then proceeds to tell me that I am going to have to rip out the entire floor to replace all of the plumbing. Crap!!!  What am I going to do?  I have no money for this.  So now I have a house I am moving into this week and very little money oh.. and no water because I cut out a pipe (like a genius),  however  I did what the book told me to do!
I called a friend who had experience and thankfully he was able to meet me there the next day.  He walked into the bathroom and looked at it for maybe about a whopping 15 seconds. He puts a wrench on it and unscrews if out of the floor.  Apparently,  cast iron screws together (again, who knew??).  Back to Home Depot we go!!  We bought a piece of threaded copper and screwed it in place, then proceeded to sweat the pipe and fix the catastrophe.  It was a few dollars in parts and took about 10-15 minutes to fix.  24 hours into being a real estate czar,  I sure did learn my first lesson.... And that is that it is very hard to do it alone. 
The bottom line is.... you need to have a team of skilled and knowledgeable people that you can access when needed.  So, I continued on and I refused to get cable or internet until I had all 3 apartments ready for rent. For the next 8 weeks all I did was go to work and work on my house and there were plenty more lessons that I would learn!  Most the hard way.
Be interested to hear if you have a similar story, leave a comment and share your experience with your first home, weather it was an investment property, house, or even your first apartment.