Dried what needed drying.
Rejected what could not be used.
Then she learned how to make the irregular material repeatable.
Eventually, she assembled her first twelve closet kits.
She packed them inside cardboard boxes sourced from a recycler in Madison.
Then she loaded them into her pickup and drove to three independent kitchen-and-bath showrooms in Sauk and Dane counties.
She asked whether they would carry the kits on consignment.
Two said no.
The third was a shop in Prairie du Sac called Heirloom Home.
They agreed to place two kits on the floor and see what happened.
Both sold within three weeks.
Heirloom Home called Lana and asked for eight more.
She milled them.
Delivered them.
Then she used the $360 in proceeds to buy a better router bit and a box of business cards.
That was when Lana decided to approach the Muning Mill formally.
She wanted a regular supply agreement.
The proposal was simple.
The mill would give her the cedar slat scrap.
Lana would haul it away at no cost.
The mill would save some of the disposal expense it was already paying.
Lana arrived with a one-page proposal.
She had practiced what she planned to say.
She had her notebook.
The mill manager was Chuck Severt.
Chuck had managed the Muning facility for nineteen years and possessed the particular confidence of a man who had rarely been surprised professionally and intended to keep it that way.
He was in his mid-fifties, had a gray mustache, and gave people the kind of handshake that was slightly too firm because it was supposed to communicate something.
Chuck read Lana’s one-page proposal with the expression of somebody studying a menu written in a language he did not speak.
When he finished, he placed it on his desk.
“You want me to give you my scrap wood so you can sell it back to people as a closet product?”
“Yes.”
Lana explained that the arrangement could also save the mill approximately $4,000 per year in disposal costs.
Chuck leaned back in his chair.
He looked at the ceiling.
Then he looked at Lana and smiled.
It was not a warm smile.
It was the smile of a man being patient with someone because he considered himself reasonable, not because he believed she had a point.
“I appreciate the creativity. I really do.”
He tapped the proposal.
“But I’ve got three guys who want that scrap for firewood, and they haul it for free. I’m not going to complicate my operation for a college project.”
A college project.
Lana was 21 years old and had already been out of college for a year.
She did not correct him.
She drove home on County Road C with both hands on the steering wheel and her jaw set.
When she reached the farm, she stayed inside the truck for several minutes before going into the house.
Garrett was in the barn.
Inga was sitting at the kitchen table with a book.
Lana sat across from her mother and told her what had happened.
All of it.