The ceiling light next to my common toilet burnt out a few days ago. So I got a chair and proceeded to try and open the light housing to replace the bulb. It refused to open, and I tried prying the edges to loosen it up. Next thing I knew, the dome-shaped glass housing gave way, along with parts of the attachments to the ceiling.

Hearing glass shatter into a million pieces close to midnight isn't exactly the smartest thing one can do. My neighbours must have thought I fatt lan char or something. And spending the next half an hour or so cleaning up the debris field it created absolutely sucked.

A closer look at the plastic ceiling brackets revealed that 2 out of 3 of them were practically disintegrated due to old age. And that was why the housing suddenly gave way when I gave it a hard nudge. Anyways... nothing a little super-glue and some replacement brackets won't fix.

The bigger headache I had was what to do with a coverless ceiling light housing. So I spent the next day thinking of what I can use to replace that empty void.

I found a cookie tin which might do just that.

First thing I did was remove the bottom lid to create a hollow cylinder.

Next, I got some wire mesh and molded it to the bottom of the cookie tin.

It was held in place with generous amount of superglue.

After a fresh coat of paint, I installed everything back.

The first thing that crossed my mind when I looked up the ceiling...

""wtf..."

It looked like some World War II inspired  prison lighting...

Which was cool for like for 5 minutes... but then I had reservations on how it'll affect the feng shui of my house...

I can't afford no negative 'chi' beb...

But that wasn't the biggest problem. I realized that this design I used couldn't distribute light properly... so the lighting was really poor.

It was dim as heck.

And also irritatingly glaring.

So it was back to the drawing board. I ripped off the wire mesh and resprayed the tin can with a new base coat.

Then I drilled holes at 3 inch intervals all round the can to help ventilate the assembly once I seal the whole thing up.

I needed some way to diffuse the light. And to do that, I need something transparent to seal the bottom of the container.

I wanted to use acrylic sheets... but it's Raya and all the hardware stores were closed.

So I rummaged through my house, and I found some ol' skool over head projector transparency sheets.

These should be durable enough to withstand the heat from the bulb.

I cut them into shape to fit the bottom.

Now, I needed to change this into a diffuser.

And to do that, I used several coats of pearl white spray.

The result is an opaque sheet of transparency.

Then I glued this to the base of the container.

Some detailing was done using gunmetal spray to make it look less plasticky.

Once that's done, I mounted everything back up the ceiling.

The homemade diffuser did it's job and the light distribution is much better.

Hope this thing holds up until I need a replacement in future.