Best gates for an old house

[akc]

Hi - I have fairly normal size stair openings, but my three-story house is 100 yrs old and has beatiful stairs and banisters. The banisters are white, which is a bummer b/c so many of the nice gates are wood (although the floor is hardwood, so I guess that might blend in?) We are going to need 6 gates - three for top of stairs that are hardware mounted and 3 that are bottom and are pressure mounted). I hate to screw into the wood, but it must be done! Safety is much more important.

I'm looking for advice on gates that are really easy to open (preferably both ways, one hand) that are also nice looking. Really, the less noticeable the better. Thoughts anyone?

Thanks in advance - :)

Alexa

[TaraNY]

I've found Kidco gates to be the best in terms of good construction, simple appearance, and ease of use. I just ordered 2 more today! My house is about 100 years old, too, so not wanting to do serious damage to the beautiful staircase details was a concern of mine, too.

The Safeway gate is a good option for top of stairs situations and can be installed with an optional kit that allows you to attach the gate without drilling holes in your stair spindles/banisters. We use the Center Gateway at the bottom and find it very easy to use.

FWIW, I have gates in white metal -- I find the wooden ones look a little too "country" for my taste, but the white metal is clean and blends with all our wide white, cottage-style wide molding and architectural details.

-Tara

[blnony]

We also have an old house with a really wide staircase. My DH did a lot of research. He didn't want to drill a hole into the banister, so he found a hardware gate mounting thing, that you place into the banister and drill into that. That way when we are done, we will remove the mounting piece, and the banister will look the same, or at least not as bad as if we drilled into the banister for the gate.
We ended up getting ours at babygates.com because we had to have one that was at least 60 inches instead of the standard 42. We chose a neutral wood that would blend into the carpeting at the bottom and top of the staircase. Our banisters are a weird dark wood, not really cherry, so that was really our only option.
Good luck-

[kk]

I have had to install gates in TWO houses over 100 years old, each with beautiful mahogany banisters. I agree with the above posters- find a way to mount a bracket onto the spindles-- at least you're only ruining one spindle for a gate rather than the whole banister. We lucked out in our new house (3 story) and only have one gate at the top of the 2nd floor because the rest of the stairs can be closed off with shut doors.

Another thing that can trip you up with old houses is the molding at the bottom- we always have to slip a piece of wood on the upper mount of the gate to compensate for the width difference b/w molding and no-molding.

Good luck. We spent may a days screaming and cursing trying to get the gates up, and I know we'll have plenty more!

Kristan