Baby Gate Adventures

We live in an old 70's style split level house with wrought iron railings on our stairs.  As Audrey starting crawling, this made looking for a baby gate quite difficult.  I went to Babies R Us to see if they could share any knowledge about which gate would be best.  I ended up buying this one:

Fancy, right?? It was really complicated and ended up being too tall for our railing plus it was missing the instructions and several parts.  I had to look up the instructions online.  As I packed this back up to return it to the store, I realized that the "banister kit" that came with this was basically glorified posts with zip ties.  My handyman senses began tingling (never a good thing around here, I'm still working on finishing our kitchen cabinet project) and decided that I was going to get a cheaper hardware-mounted gate and do this thing on the cheap, but still safely, of course.

So, we picked up a gate that was $20 cheaper and headed to Lowe's.  I got some industrial strength zip ties and found some wood that I had them cut to the right length for the gate.  The total for these supplies was somewhere around $7.

After I sanded the wood to make it nice and smooth and splinter-free, I secured it to our iron railing with the zip ties.  I had to pull pretty hard to make sure this sucker wasn't going anywhere.  After I cut off the excess, I sanded down the ends so it wouldn't be as sharp.

 

Time to drill!  I just love my drill :)

I attached the mounting pieces.

As much as it pained me to drill in my walls, I did it because I love my little Otter Pop.

Don't mind the mess, but this is what it ended up looking like.  It sure doesn't look fancy, but baby proofing isn't exactly "upgrading".

Unfortunately, there were some casualties along the way.

All done!  Audrey is safe and sound from tumbling down the stairs, and I didn't have to pay out the wazoo for a fancy baby gate with banister adapters.

I am available for hire for baby gate installation, if you were wondering.  I know you were.