Silverstream Reserve's New House

During the winter Silverstream was gifted an old building from the Ecan site at Kainga. This single room was the old morning tea room and arrived with cutlery still in the draws and cups in the cupboards. Mike Kwant at the Waimakariri District Council’s Greenspace team secured it for us and since then we’ve been overwhelmed by the help we’ve had to make it useable as the Silverstream resource/tea room.

King House Removals helped early on by carting the house the 6km to its new site. Soon afterwards two builders, Todd Morel and David Cartwright, offered to help with the work that was needed to get the building consented and tidied up. RW Design of Kaiapoi then offered help with the plans and getting consent through WDC.

Without these people we would be floundering. The building is a dream come true for the volunteers but with little budget for the project it was going to be a big ask. In September we had a volunteer’s meeting to work out what our aims are for the building and how to proceed. This quickly reached a consensus and now we have a path to getting the building ready to use.

We will be focusing on making the building useable as simply as possible, allowing us to use it as soon as possible. Our volunteers are already doing small jobs on the building and will contribute a lot more before the job is finished. This is

tremendous for keeping costs down (and for getting to know the building).

However there is much we will need and we welcome help in any form. Whether it be sponsorship, materials, donations or expertise we would appreciate any approaches and would love to broaden our community.