02 03 Batali, Dior, and Dewey Walk into a Bar...: Baby Gates for Tricky [Annoying] Stairs 04 05 15 16 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 31 32 33

Baby Gates for Tricky [Annoying] Stairs

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So I'm not joking when I say that we spent a small fortune trying to find the right baby gates for our stairs. I bought almost every trial gate online, which then meant we had to return it via UPS or FedEx and eat the shipping cost. Nothing at Target, Buy Buy Baby, or anywhere else was quite working for our new (beautiful but difficult) staircase.


We didn't want to drill any holes in our walls, so we use all spring-loaded gates. We even bought these little guys to help protect our walls.

Baby Gate Guru Wall Protectors




We went with this little number for our upstairs gate. You can adjust the springs to fit so it worked with our baseboards and our pillar. Jon adjusted the springs perfectly (I tried to do it myself, and that didn't work out so well), so I don't worry at all when Corey goes and shakes on the gate like a monkey in a cage. It's super secure! It is NOT auto-closing like our downstairs gate, however, so you do have to make sure you lock it in.

Summer Infant Extra Tall Walk-Thru Gate




This is our gate at the bottom of the stairs. This was BY FAR the trickiest staircase to ever try and baby proof. One up me. I dare you.

On one side, we have an uneven surface because of the "baseboard" and the wall. On the other side, we have a tapered pillar surrounded by wrought iron. It was almost the end of my sanity trying to make this work. In the end, we found the things listed below that worked for us!

This gate is extremely secure (our son and nephew have both but it through the ringer) and it's also an auto-closing gate. That's awesome when you've got your hands full going up or coming down the stairs. No worries there! This bad boy isn't going anywhere.

Dreambaby Chelsea Extra Wide Auto Close Security Gate




We also needed to extend the gate to get it past the wrought iron, so we bought this extension to go with the gate.



In order to use the spring-loaded gate on the banister, we had to order these little accessories


You can adjust them based on the width of your banister, which for us, was thinner at the top and wider at the bottom. 







We wanted to be able to have a solid place to put our foot on the bottom step, so we had to angle the gate in order to get this space. It doesn't look the best, but it works just fine and dandy, thank you.

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