Important Links for the Bean Rebuild

Volunteer coordination sheet - We need volunteers, lots of volunteers please sign up so we can coordinate and keep people busy.
Greenbean Wish List - We are looking for some additional items to help us get started in the new space.
Espresso and Baking Equipment Wish List - Also there's some specific items that if we don't need to buy or can get used we'd be thrilled!

Thanks to Cindy our Architect!

If you see Cindy Black, the Beans resident architect extraordinaire give her a big hug and HUGE THANK YOU. Cindy has put in a LOT of time in the last days and weeks drafting and then refining drawings of our building plans and helping us to mesh our dreams with reality and the city of Seattle's various and sundry codes and regulations. All this hard work culminated in a meeting at 8am this morning with the city to apply for our building and health department permits...the good news is that they accepted our application...the bad news is that they told her it would be 2-3 weeks before we'd be hearing back from them. SO, that means 2-3 more weeks before we can really start building out the coffee bar area of the store.

Never fear though, our fearless manager John Eidson still has a lot of projects for helping hands to do...painting furniture and cleaning to name 2 of them...but be sure to email him at jjeidson@gmail.com to confirm that he'll be at the site when you want to work. He's been working 6 days a week for the last several weeks and so he might be taking a few days off as we await the permits.

A couple highlights from the week:

• We now have ALL of our equipment with the exception of our espresso machine, 1 grinder, our cooled pastry case and a toaster! Yeah! If you have time next week and would be interested in driving to Kelso to pick up a couple of these items please let Summer know by emailing manager@greenbeancoffee.org
• Our Redeemer Lutheran Church donated a 14ft long pew which is going to become lovely seating for folks with laptops
• Ozzy scrubbed out the far back cooler which was the last untouched McDonald's holdout....the space is now 'gross-free' thanks to his hard work!
• Nathan Marion from Fremont Abby and Blue Tree walked through the space to offer his wisdom as a consultant who's helped create similar spaces in the past...with a specific eye for how to make the Bean an appealing venue for the arts
• Rebecca Miller, Laura Watrous and Jane Warner met to continue dreaming for our future kid's corner...and Jasmine Underland is dreaming about starting a MOPS groups...get ready families!

clean and painted

The blue walls and a few of our bar stools - it's looking more and more like
the Green Bean everyday. Woo hoo! and so clean...

Go green!


Chairs that were a surprise buy at the
restaurant liquidation sale.


Refrigerators and more... so exciting.

Painting!

The beginning of a full day of painting. Go Allison! The space had previously been
pressure-washed - that really changed how everything looked. You can't even
tell that there ever was grease on the walls. Even the bathrooms got cleaned -
thanks to everybody who has been spending time there!

Repatching ceiling tiles - now it's all painted and looks great.


John in his space suit spray-painting the ceiling. :)

Colors, Refrigerators and Furniture!

You wouldn't believe the progess that's been made in the new space in this last week! Here are some highlights:

• All the holes in the floor from the old McD's furniture were patched by Ozzy and Jesse
• The walls were prepped for paint by Sarah
• On Wednesday Emily from SPACE interior design in Greenwood did a complimentary color consult and helped us pick out beautiful, bright, Greenbeanish colors for the walls
• The ENTIRE interior was painted on Friday by a huge group of you....THANKS
• We made a trip to Portland on Friday to purchase fridges, soup warmers, shelving and more...and scored 2 orange wingback chairs for FREE!
• Saturday the back wall of the kitchen was constructed with help from Cole and Ben so you can now see where the kitchen, seating area and back rooms will be
• Donations are beginning to come in...children's books, adult books, a piano bench, 2 rugs, a router, mirror for the men's room....yeah! Thanks SO MUCH for all of your generosity!

What's next? We're beginning to collect donations this week, and setting up the shop to begin painting furniture...and we're awaiting word that our building permit has gone through so we can begin work on the actual kitchen area. So we still need helpers...but can now use folks interested in redoing furniture in addition to construction!

The Joys of Community!

Highlights from Yesterday:

• Steve, one of our regulars at the Bean popped into the new space and thinks he might be able to put to good use the room sized walk in cooler, the ONE piece of equipment that hasn't been taken away yet!
• Another regular, Chris, stopped in and offered to wash all the windows when it's time
• We're having GREAT responses in our efforts to locate artists to help paint whimsical vines on the outside of the building! Now to get in touch with them all!
• Yet another customer overheard us talking about paint samples 2 days ago and gave us the info for a local interior designer who's coming in today to do a FREE color consult! Emily Lauderback from Space, a Greenwood interior design Collective...check her out!
• And finally, our children's corner has it's first donation of books from Mark who's kids practically grew up in the Greenbean. Thanks Mark!

What an amazing community project!

Green Bean Wish Lists

We've had a lot of you asking how you can help and what we need....so we've put together 2 wishlists. If you have furniture/decorative things/etc you'd like to donate look at the first list. If you'd like to help purchase some of our espresso or baking equipment look at the 2nd link

Greenbean Wish List
Espresso & Baking Equipment Wish List

Thanks so much for contributing to the re-beginnings of this beautiful space!

Every Bit Helps!

253 volunteer hours logged in the first week of construction! Hoorah! So much has been done but we still have a lot to do. So if demo scared you, now's the time to stop by for just an hour or two and have John set you to work on one of many smaller tasks. Here are a few things we need done this week:

• patch the floors with tiles where we removed chairs and partial walls
• cut bolts off in outdoor seating area where the McDonalds playland used to be
• repair ceiling
• PAINT!

We are hoping to begin painting the interior of the space this Friday and Saturday! Come join us for a painting party extraordaire!

Sign up here to help this week!

Cleaning up

Silas, Joe and Ozy hard at work cleaning up the outside. That rubber proved to be far heavier and more difficult to move than we expected! A few wheelbarrow mishaps and bush collisions later, though, it was cleared! It's going to look great! (and already does).

Cole and Jesse fixing the ceiling tiles - spray painting is next.

Ewww....

By now, nothing we find in this space should surprise us. Here is Ozzie, scraping grease off the wall. This is in addition to the many french fries we have found, rotting in the back cooler, on the floor and floating in vats of oil. Wow.

It is coming along...

John and Jesse removing one of the hoods - it's always a surprise what you find!

All the tables from the McDonald's - now they're all gone! Thanks the scrap metal guy.


John trying to pry out a fryer.


Jesse disassembling another stove.

See all that equipment? It is now GONE! Good job everyone.

Finance Update

I'll be posting weekly updates on rebuilding expenses. As of 4/13/10, we've spent $742.93 on supplies and equipment for the demolition and excavation of the old McDonald's interior. Our balance in the rebuilding fund is $78,446.33. We're still hoping to raise another $20,000 to complete the project. I'll keep you all posted as we receive additional donations.

Removing deep fryer vent

John cutting out the deep fryer vent. Whew.

Work is moving fast, stop by and see

Whew! As you can see/read - work is moving fast! Having so many volunteers is SO helpful - thank you. Last night, some guys came to take out the fire suppressor above all the stoves and fryers and they had to get at the gas line for a certain part. Right as they were starting to access it, something started hissing. It took ten minutes and someone jumping over an 8 foot high fence to get the leak to stop - by that time the whole of Greenwood smelled like gas. whoops. Guess those are the kind of things that happen when your re-modeling an old McDonalds! Overall, things are going off without a hitch. Just today we got rid of all of the tables and chairs - yeah!

Come on by and say hi or stay awhile and help out - we'd love to see you!

100 volunteer hours already

If you haven't been by the new space in awhile, stop by because you'll hardly recognize it! All of the McDonalds furniture is out, all the half walls that divided the space are gone, and most of the old kitchen equipment is gone! We've had over 100 volunteer hours already put in and the space is looking great.

Today:
- some guys with a front loader are coming to drag away the large concrete barriers that are blocking the drive through
- a metal recycler is coming to take away the remainder of the metal kitchen 'stuff'
- Romios pizza is donating lunch to all the volunteers!

Haven't signed up to help? Now's your chance...click here!

Demo begins

Jessie working hard to remove the chairs/table.


The rebuild has begun! Thursday was the first day, filled with tearing out, knocking down - good stress-relieving activities. The focus was initially to see what we had to work with - seeing how the walls were constructed, what is behind the beautiful tapestry-like boards lining the cinder-block walls, etc... You get the picture. Friday was full of removing the chairs and tables (a difficult job as they are bolted into the floor) and opening up to several people from local restaurants coming through to survey and take the equipment we are not keeping. Hard work is also being put into conserving and recycling as much of our waste as possible.

Friday was also spent trying to get ready for volunteers to start coming and putting they're wonderful hands to work in the space come Monday. We would LOVE to see you - whenever, for however long you are available. One hour, two hours, half a day - please come. It would be great to see you and work alongside you. Thanks for checking in - more updates to come.

Click here to be taken to the google spreadsheet where you can sign up to come in and help:

Lease signed

We signed the Lease for the McDonalds space. Expect construction to begin in the coming week! We're planning on mainly a volunteer basis for doing the remodeling and our contractor John Eidson assures us that if you are willing to work but don't know what to do he can use your skills. Just check the Volunteer sheet and sign up for a day and time so that we don't have more people than we can effectively use show up all at once.