One of the fears Squatch and I have for Little Man is that he will fall down a set of stairs. Squatch’s parents have a set of stairs going to the basement that Little Man has been focused on since we got here at the beginning of the month. We brought our dinky little gate that works well in a hallway or doorway, but it needed a little beefing up to keep Little Man from tumbling down the stairs. Insert my awesome father-in-law. He had sketched out a few ideas of what he wanted to do, and I had a few ideas saved on Pinterest, so together, we made an awesome gate for the stairs.

Our first concern was about the spindles on the railing – they are not super sturdy, and the closest stud on the wall does not match up with the end of the railing. My father-in-law had a great idea to fashion the new end of the railing out of some wood and clamp it around the existing newel. It works like a charm!

For the actual gate, we just screwed 8 slats to the top and bottom pieces of wood and stained everything a darker brown to match the existing wood. We took a separate piece that we then attached to the wall, and added the hinges to that, so we wouldn’t have too big of a mess on the wall to have to patch up in the future.

Squatch and I picked up a heavier duty gate latch at the store to use, and we attached it to the stair side of the gate. Little Man would not be able to reach over and unlock it, so we’re safe.

WRONG. The kid took a week, but he’s figured out how to open the darn thing! At least it takes him several tries and he makes some noise while doing so. This gives one of us adults the time to run over and pull him away from the gate.

All in all, it took a day to make. That includes the trip to town for the hinges and latch. My father-in-law has a ton of scrap wood in his pole barn, so we just picked from what he had laying around to use for this. The gate is sturdy, and will last for as long as we need it to.