My name is Nick, 32, I'm a landlord from Ithaca, NY. I've been investing in real estate in my area for 8 years, 9 later this season. I've seen enough in my real estate investing journey to shed some insight and experiences for those who are new or haven't had these events happen to them yet. I'm going to start writing weekly logs of my journey as a landlord - successes and mistakes. Sometimes I'll tell a serious story or a not so serious one. Mostly about things I do wrong, how I correct it, and the lesson I learn. I'm a huge believer we can learn from each other and not repeat the same actions. I wish you all success and a long fulfilling journey. If this keeps reciprocating well with the community, I'll keep doing them. This one isn't a serious one.

1/25/25 around 3PM- Mel (wife) and I were at our rental getting it rent ready for our new tenants. Today's end of the day job: putting on a new door. Now, seems like a simple task- take the old door off and put a new door on. Little background behind the door: It's a MDF cheap one you buy at HD or Lowes. This door was going on a crooked frame in our old 1900's house, for those of you who know where this is going - you're right! You can't put a straight door on a crooked frame.

Luckily, we knew this and expected this task to take a shorter amount of time because we've done it many times before. We lined up the door, marked it. Great, we only need to take 1/2 inch off on one side and at the top and we began to plane the door. Hour 1 goes by, we're still working on this door, none of our marks matched up, now one side of the door wasn't working when it was previously. We also didn't take into account the slant in the floor either.

Hour 2 goes by and we're looking at each other with our hands in the air "why is this taking so long?!" A little frustrated and thinking about being done, we kept the door on the hinges as we finished our last few planes on the bottom corner. Me being me, I simply tugged on the door and ripped out the bottom hinge from the door. Clearly, not Nickproof. (I've been powerlifting for 3 years, 202 all muscle. Sometimes, I'll hold objects in my hand and it breaks. My family makes a joke about how those items aren't "Nickproof") At this point we decided to call it and come back tomorrow. Later that night, we reflected on what went wrong. We realized the screws we were using were too small for the door hinge and we just had to finish that small bottom corner.

1/26/25 - We went to Lowes and picked up some 1 1/2 inch door hinge screws (sound in the screw/nail section) and went back to the rental. Couple quick swipes of the planer, cleaned up the sides to get rid of the bumps, nice and smooth. Put up the door, put in the screws and it worked out perfectly. I gave it the Nickproof tug and it passed the test. All done.

Cleaning up our work area, I remembered what my old co-worker once told me on the construction site "There are 3 ways a job gets done: One way in our head, another way planned out, and how the job actually goes." A little chuckle to myself and a lesson learned. I went down stairs to finalize our lease.

Upstate New York, New York

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