Don't have permission

I was doing an Airdrop to my wifes macbook air and weird things happened and now the Air has lost all permissions- I can not see any files and cannot reset permissions.  Doing a search it seemed like full reinstall is the only answer... pain in the butt.... any other ideas before I do the reinstall?
I did all the typical stuff like disk utilities repairs and no help
Air is late 2010 version with Yosemite.

None of my files were visible or accessible in finder... I don't have permissions to even view them. I am logged in as the Administrator.  I tried all normal things but they didn't fix- computer restart, log out/in, disk utilities repair permissions, searched web for an answer for 30 minutes for a fix and seems the only answer is a fresh install.   If I open a program I can see previous files and open things there. Spotlight also works OK. But finder is blank with little red minus signs (no permission), except for public folder was OK.  
so I downloaded and re install yosemite and now 4-5 hours later things are back to normal... my finder is working again.

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