A Little Like Rocket Science

It seems so simple now that it is done, but I am surprised how difficult and time consuming it was for me to install a baby safety gate at the new house. It was too much like rocket science for me! My goals were to keep the integrity of the building materials, yet keep costs down. Not an easy task.

I won't bore you with all the details, but let's just say I bought and returned numerous gates and installation kits, spent about four hours on the Internet searching and researching, and in the end I used the same gate we had at our old house, because it was paid for and we like it a lot.

Here's how I did it. Since we have so much oak wood in the house, I bought five 1 x 3 boards and glued four of them together for the hinge side, and put one on the baluster for the latch. Notice that one of the boards had to be raised to miss the trim at the bottom of the wall. The thick board the hinge is mounted to allows the door to swing open wide despite the handrail that is behind it. The thin board allows me to to mount the latch assembly to the narrow, uneven part of the baluster. Total cost, gate-$20 at a consignment sale, wood and hardware-$20. But please don't ask me about gas money going back and forth to Baby's R Us and Home Depot!