[Q] Rooting a soft-bricked Galaxy Note 1 phone

For many of you, my question may look either very familiar or just a piece of cake.
To me neither it is familiar nor easy...

What I have done so far:
Crashed on how to install Android SDK and enabled ADB.
Now my phone is on Recovery mode and ADB has detected it.
I tried the command adb pull, adb backup. Both didn't work as my phone is not rooted and stated "remote object doesn't exist"

What I am after:
Need nooby proof steps to root the phone using adb or any other possible way (which I could decifer)
Then use the command adb pull to get my contacts, possibly pictures.

Some are saying to re-flash. But I am not sure the side effects of re-flashing. I just don't want to lose my data.

To give a bit of background: phone went on soft-bricked in Samsung Service Centre while I was looking for point to charge it as battery was zero charge. Accidently the staff connected my phone to a machine that does software upgrades and disconnected from it.

I am a super noob about the jargon of Android, how things work internally etc. I was just a person who used the phone for messaging, watching lectures, storing music, photos and browing. No games, not much apps.