Garrett nodded slowly.
It was the nod of a man updating a calculation he had been running privately for several years.
They drove back toward Murfreesboro mostly in silence.
Somewhere along Route 41A, Garrett finally spoke.
“What do you need?”
Lana told him.
“I’ll think about it.”
Two weeks later, Garrett arrived at her house with a check for $4,000 and the name of an accountant in Shelbyville.
“He’s honest,” Garrett said. “And not expensive.”
That became one of the most important investments in what would eventually become Dickstra Cedar Works.
In 2012 and 2013, the question stopped being whether Lana’s business could work.
The new question was whether everyone who had dismissed it was willing to admit that it already did.
In 2012, Lana hired her first employee.
Her name was Greta Salazar.
Greta was 31 and had been doing finish carpentry for a contractor in Murfreesboro.
She heard about Lana through the contractor network and called to ask whether there was work available.
There was.
Greta was precise with a router and possessed the particular quality of somebody who took craftsmanship personally.
With two people working, installation capacity nearly doubled.
Revenue for 2012 reached approximately $194,000.
In 2013, Lana rented a real workshop.
It was a former auto-body shop on Elm Street in Shelbyville with roughly 3,200 square feet.
That move allowed her to begin prefabricating closet components into larger panels rather than constructing everything piece by piece inside customers’ homes.
The change transformed the business model.
Instead of spending two days inside a customer’s house fitting irregular slats individually, the team could fabricate standardized assemblies in the shop.
Those panels could then be delivered and installed much faster.
Installation time fell dramatically.
Quality became more consistent.
Effective cost per job decreased.
Revenue generated per working day increased.
Musgrave watched the operation grow.
In 2013, the mill renegotiated the supply agreement.
Lana would pay $200 per delivery, still twice each month, and Musgrave would guarantee a minimum volume.
By that point, mill employees were also sorting some of the scrap more carefully before delivery, separating potentially usable pieces from material that was clearly unsuitable.
That sorting was itself an acknowledgment that the scrap now had value.
Don Crowley said he had never seen anybody find a serious use for that material before Lana.
He said it in the neutral tone people sometimes use when they are trying not to sound foolish for having overlooked something themselves.
At the same time, the housing market was recovering from the 2008 collapse.
New residential construction was increasing around Nashville.
Home-renovation spending was rising.
Consumers who had spent several years postponing projects were starting to invest in their homes again.
And their preferences had changed.
They increasingly wanted materials that felt real.
Products with durability.
Products with a story.
Words like artisan and sustainable were appearing throughout the renovation market.
Lana’s cedar systems were built from recovered mill byproduct.
They were functional.