Baby gate for top of stairs

[daisy1234]

Hi I need to find a new baby gate for the top of my stairs in my new house. What is the best option? Best place to purchase? Do I have to drill holes in my oak banisters??? Any hints greatly appreciated!

Laura

[Pennylane]

We bought a Kidco Wooden gate for the top of our stairs and It is working really well. We have banisters on both sides so my husband installed it using this kit. No drilling into my banisters which was nice.

http://www.babysupermall.com/main/products/kdc/kdc01010.html

I purchased mine at USA Baby, although you can probably find them cheaper elsewhere.

Ann

[daisy1234]

Thank you...I am so glad you mentioned that...I didn't even realize we had a choice about not drilling into my banisters!

Laura

[o_mom]

Yes, there are kits available - Safe eginings has a bunch:

http://www.safebeginnings.com/Webcomponents/Catalog/Public/showsubcat.asp?cat=childproofing&sub=Gate+Mounting+Systems

If you or your DH are handy, you can build a box around the gate for mounting.

You do need a hard mounted gate at the top of stairs, so they don't push it out and fall down the stairs on it. For the bottom of the stairs and other places, pressure gates are fine. For the bottom of the stairs and high-use areas, consider a good walk-through gate so you don't have to step over. In lesser used areas, or for travel, the wood snap-in pressure gates are great and very inexpensive - around $10 each.

[tjham]

I have the Evenflo Secure Solutions gate and love it. I installed it myself (DH took too long so I did it myself!). I looked at the pictures of the kits (at 16.95 a side) and figured I could do it for lots cheaper than that! I went to Home Depot and bought 2 1x2 strips of wood, cut to the length I needed. I even had them miter the top of each. I attached them to the bannisters with 3 cable ties each as tight as possible (in a curve if possible) with the bottom of the wood strip flush with the floor. Then I attached the hardware to the woodstrips instead of the bannisters. They have been there for 4 years now, tight as ever.

[brittone2]

We have Ikea gates at the top and bottom of our stairs. They are very similar to the wooden Kidco one pictured and are quite a bit less money. We've been very happy with ours. I know not everyone has an Ikea nearby, but if you do, they might be worth checking out. The price was great.

[nfowife]

We just bought the kidco elongat for the top of our stairs and will be doing the no-drill installation (but we are doing it ourselves, I don't think the kit is necessary at all, we also want to stain the wood pieces to match our woodwork). We have safeway gates downstairs but the top of our stairs is a very wide opening- 54" so that is a very wide safeway door! For the bottom of the stairs we decided to go with the lascal kiddy guard because it is retractable and can be mounted when there are banisters on both sides easily.