IN PICS | Historic Cape home oozes character courtesy of its vintage décor

He lives a life of simplicity; carless, he cycles into town and back for all his daily needs, takes pottery classes twice a week, practises yoga and seldom uses a computer, confessing to being "a Luddite, a builder and a gardener".

Surprisingly, for a gatherer, he firmly believes one can accrue too much stuff, speaking of one day stripping right back and "giving it all up".

It's in this unlikely place that Diedericks exists: between treasuring the things that he is inextricably drawn to, or more specifically their histories, and living a life of asceticism, completely free of baggage.

Giving in to his monk-like inclinations, he left Cape Town for Villiersdorp in search of a life of peace and quiet. He came to view his house in March of 2016, at a time when local temperatures hover below 30°C, and drought had ravaged the landscape.

"It was a dump! Good enough for a horror film," he says, relaying the severe damp that lurked in the walls, ineffectively concealed by timber panelling and emitting the stench of rot.

But, for all its transgressions, it was still an original Victorian home on a corner stand in the "nice part of town", with high ceilings and irreplaceable architectural heritage like the classic tin-roofed veranda and deep timber architraves. And for a man like Diedericks, potential awaits in the darkest of places.

"I didn't care what it looked like," he says, "I'm a dreamer and I know I can fix anything." He's not flattering himself; he has renovated and constructed many houses and has gained a set of skills most builders would be envious of.

The transformation has been slow — almost four years slow — but patience is something Diedericks has plenty of, and money doesn't grow on trees. While the layout remains much the same as before, the house is now flooded with light, amplified by its freshly plastered, clean white walls and new, pigmented cement floors.

In order to gain much-needed light and infuse the building with the breeziness it now possesses, Diedericks knocked down walls, moved doors and installed a cornucopia of solid-wood sash windows that he had been amassing for decades.

As a collector with minimalist aspirations, his urge to strip back and live with less is always in the wings. This tension is present among the mass of precious belongings he has congregated over time, edited and styled with an austere undercurrent.

White walls with the crispness of an art gallery provide the requisite balance for tactile layers of rusted iron, steel, rattan, imbuia and oak, all in a graceful state of ageing. Without this combo, the space would lean towards gloomy junk-shop vibes.

Green and black, two colours Diedericks cannot resist, are the mainstay in the home's colour spectrum. Anything with a lion is also a done deal. Cue the small wooden statue of a man fighting a lion he bought in Mumbai — the arms of both were broken off, but that was no reason to abandon its acquisition.

Practicality is another tenet by which he lives. In his study and kitchen, he props his tables up on wooden blocks to improve on their comfort. He pragmatically defends his choice to hold back on displaying every item he has accumulated, saying, "For me, something has to be functional before it's beautiful — these things all have to be cleaned, so I'd rather stash them away."

Storage, in its various guises, has an allure Diedericks is drawn to. Cupboards, trunks, suitcases, tins and bins are all plausible vessels to maintain equilibrium in the home.

Cabinetry comes in the form of loose kitchen units and mismatched, worn cabinets, as well as banks of cupboards and suitcases lined up to form what is akin to a built-in solution, only far more sculptural.

Provenance matters to Diedericks, but not in the stuffy, antique dealer's sense — it's about stories and past lives. Asked how he chooses what he collects, he says, "It's love at first sight, it's either there or it's not."

Isn't it always that which one buys for love that has the richest stories to tell? A cupboard in the scullery, bearing the name Walker and Co Cabinetmakers, used to be home to roosting chickens. A scarred collection of Word War 2 ammunition boxes has been repurposed as shelving. A chest of drawers was reclaimed from a burning building and a spruced-up armchair, featuring the word "parliament" was sold to him from the trolley of a homeless man.