Holy cow, its a knock down drag out!
We keep Maddie in her crate at night with the gate closed and we'll continue to do that until we're satisfied that she won't get up in the middle of the night to poop in my slippers. Once we think she's got enough control to last through the night and wake us if she needs to go, we'll either leave the door off the crate or remove the top of the crate (whichever she prefers) but we'll still keep the door to the bedroom closed.
In the day we're both out of the house for 8 hours usually. Her crate is only big enough to be a bed so I would never leave her in there all day. We use a 6 sided plastic pen to keep her in during the day because we have room for it. I wouldn't see a problem with keeping her in a large crate during the day if thats all we had space for though.
Eventually we'll give her free reign of the house but that won't happen until I'm confident in the cessation of her chewing antics and her "Find where I pooped" games.
Tom