We used a big Sterilite tub. Clear plastic. Biggest one they sell, I think - about 1' deep, 16" wide, 32" long. Big enough for 5 chicks; even when they were getting too big, it was find for them to sleep in after a day in the "saw-horse chicken tractor."
To get the tub off the floor, I put in on a little pedestal table I use in the yard, and actually screwed the tub to the table for safety. Worked great. The chicks were right behind where I sit at the computer, here in my luxurious laundry-room office. They saw us all the time, and we handled them frequently. Now they're pretty tame, except for Shadow, the Black Australorp. She's tame in her own way. It just involves biting me.
I made a wood and hardware cloth top. I tried cutting an opening in the original lid, thinking I'd use screws or something to attach screen to it, but the plastic they use for the lid is brittle and shattered as I tried to cut it. It's okay - the original idea was half-thought out and the final lid worked great.
I used a plant hook screwed to the ceiling to hang the light, and had a string tied to the brooder light's hang-loop to suspend it. I swagged the string off on a pair of screws shot into a cheap bookshelf in the room, winding around them in a figure-8. Easy to adjust the height. I checked temps with a point-an-click thermometer. By the way, ZooNana, hardware "cloth" is metal. It won't burn, and it dissipates enough heat by surface area that it doesn't heat the frame when the light is right on top of it.
