Customized Baby Gates - Safer, Less Expensive, More Permanent, and Better Looking!

We've got nine small grandchildren with a tenth on the way.  Two of them are local, so they are over at least every Sunday for dinner, and the others will all be here next week for our annual family reunion.  Our primary home has stairs from the front door up to the kitchen/front-room area where we spend a lot of time visiting or babysitting.  The stairs are nice and wide, but that has made it difficult to use a store-bought baby-gate.  The consequence has been that we wind up blocking the stairs with chairs laid on their sides, large baskets etc.  They not only look cluttery but they get in the way and trip people in a key thoroughfare of our home.

BTW, many of the commercially-produced gates are inappropriate for this application.  Consumer Reports' Safety Gate Buying Guide states that:

"Pressure-mounted gates are not secure enough to use at the top of stairs, so never use them that way, no matter how much you want to avoid drilling holes into your walls. Avoid accordion-style gates without a top filler bar and gates with horizontal slats or tempting footholds."

With the reunion coming up Linda decided we needed to make our own baby gate ASAP so yesterday we took stock of the materials we already had, planned what else we'd need, and took a drive over to the hardware store.  I'm pleased to say that the result was simple to build as well as safer, more elegant, better fitting, more permanent, and less expensive than the commercial kinds of baby gates.

Here's how to make your own Customized Baby Gate.

Materials Needed:

• 3/16" thick Wall Panel (we used white "Bead Board" because it matched our decor but you can use whatever you want).  Here's a link to the kind we bought for a different project--we had a scrap left over that was just about the perfect size so we didn't have to buy this, but a 4'X8' sheet of this costs under $20.
• 2"X2"X8' Pine Furring Strips (they're like a 2X4 stud cut in half length-wise to be a square when you look at the end of it).  These cost about $2 each (we needed two). 
• 2 Door Hinges with Screws.  These cost under $3 each.
• 1 Hook and Eye Latch with a Safety Spring.  This costs just over $1.
• 15 gauge 1.5" Finish Nails.  These cost about $3.50/lb (we already had some from previous projects so didn't need to buy them).

Start out by measuring the opening you want to block with your baby gate.  In our case that was 41.5" wide and 34" high.  Don't assume that the width is uniform.  We discovered that the opening wasn't uniform and that the width actually varied from 41.5" at the top to 40.75" at the bottom.  The beauty of making a customized baby gate is that you can make it to fit exactly in whatever opening you're dealing with.  You'll need about 1/4" clearance on each side for hinge thickness and swing room so plan a gate that is at least half an inch narrower than your opening.  We chose to make the height of our gate 2" less than the height of the opening so we'd have 1" of swing room at the bottom and a symmetrical gap at the top.

We needed a gate that was 41" wide (actually it tapered to 40.25" for the bottom width) and 31" high.  The first step was to make a 1/4" wide groove down the middle the whole length of one side on the furring strips (this is to slide the wall panel into).  I made it by marking the center-line along one side of the board and then cutting the groove with a circular saw--I actually had to make two parallel cuts on either side of the line and dig out the center piece in order to get the groove to be 1/4" thick.  Set your circular saw's blade depth to just over 3/4".  Alternatively you could use a table router with a 1/4" blade set to a 3/4" depth.

Next make the frame by cutting two lengths of furring strip the proper length for the width and two the proper length for the height.  Use a miter box to cut the ends into a 45 degree angle (sloping inward toward the groove).   Now slide the grooves of one width and one height frame piece onto the corner of your wall panel so the 45 degree angle cuts fit snugly together into a corner.  Make a mark on the wall panelling where it emerges from the groove at the end of each of the sides of the frame (i.e. away from the corner) you're holding in place--see photos in the upper left side of the collage above.  Those marks on the wall panelling are the height and width boundaries of the piece of panelling you'll need to cut in order to fit snuggly in the frame.  Draw the two lines out from the marks and cut along them with the circular saw in order to complete the rectangle you'll from the sheet of panelling in order to fit into the frame (see photos in upper left side of the collage above).

Now fit the frame pieces around the piece of wall panelling and put two or three finish nails into each side of the four corners--see the upper center photo in the collage above.  When your framed panel is complete (see upper right photo in the collage) attach the two hinges with screws to one of the sides of the frame and then screw those hinges to the wall (see photos on the upper right side of the collage above).  Finally attach the hook and eye latch to the door and to the wall opposite the hinged side so the gate can be secured.

The result should be a tightly fitting sturdy and secure baby gate that is both functional and beautiful.  Protect those beautiful babies--they are the future of the world!