Providing a safe place for your child to play is a top priority in parent’s lives. When I found out I was expecting twins I realized I better get a head start on baby proofing the house. I had a suspicious time would likely not be on my side after their arrival!
We spend most of our time in the family room so I knew that is where we would want to contain these little rascals. The family room has a doorway that leads to the rest of the house so my first baby proofing task was to find a baby gate that would keep our pets out and, eventually, keep our kids in once they became mobile.
Searching For The Right Gate
I started browsing for baby gates, knowing I wanted one that opens like a door and not left in a fixed position. This search led me to only a few options: the standard plastic look or the incredibly overpriced (in my opinion) metal gates that resemble prison bars. Not only did I not like the way they looked, I have to admit some part of my brain has never allowed me to understand exactly how they work. Over the years at friend’s homes I would either stand at the top of the stairs pleading for help or try my best to hobble over them. This wasn’t going to cut it with my soon to be family of 4 and three pets.
I decided the best course of action was to make one myself. This allowed me to customize the size, style, and functionality of it. I went to the garage to see what spare wood we had laying around. To my surprise, I forgot about several pieces of 1×3 wood that I found at Habitat (ReStore) for just a few bucks. I also had some leftover white paint from a previous project – score! After I realized this would only cost me a few dollars in hardware I was determined to get the job done!
How To Measure Your DIY Baby Gate
To start, I made a few quick measurements of the doorway to see how wide the gate should be. Our doorway is 30 inches wide so I decided to cut two pieces of wood to 29 inches – this will allow the door to open freely after adding hardware. These two pieces will be the top and bottom of the gate.
Now you will want to determine the height of the gate. The wood I had happened to be 6 feet long, so I decided to make it simple and just cut them in half – making the gate 3 feet tall. I used 5 of these 3 foot pieces of wood. You may want more or less, depending on how much spacing you want on your gate.
Here is what I have at this point (for a 30 inch doorway):
(2) 1×3 cut to 29″
(5) 1×3 cut to 36″
Assembling Your Gate
Lay out your five longer pieces of wood on a level surface (vertically). Then you will lay the two shorter pieces of wood over the tops and bottoms of the longer pieces. Next, you will adjust your five pieces of wood until they are evenly spaced. I just eyeballed this step since I didn’t care about it being 100% precise. If it looks even to the eye, it’s even. Haha, okay that does not work for most things, but I was okay with that motto for this project!
When you have everything spaced out you can now put the gate together. Using a cordless drill, I attached the top piece of wood using 5 screws. I then double checked my spacing before attaching the bottom piece with 5 screws.
At this stage, I held the gate up to the doorway to make sure it was a good fit (it was, yay!) Then I slapped a few coats of paint on it. After the paint dries, it’s time to attach the hardware. I chose pretty standard hinges and ended up deciding on a self-locking gate latch for the closing mechanism, like this one.
Once you’ve got the hinges and latch installed, you’ve got yourself a DIY baby gate. It looks so much better (in my opinion) than a plastic gate. With using the gate latch, you can “unlock” it with ease instead of having to fiddle around with a traditional baby gate.
Update: We’ve had this gate for almost 2 years now and it is still holding strong! The only teeny bit of advice that I can offer is to put the hinges and latch on the side of the doorway that is not in the primary room you are containing the kids in. Mine are now at the age where they think it is hilarious (it’s not) to flip the latch up and run free (in opposite directions, of course).
