It’s time to put a baby gate up at the top of the stairs. The little one is not crawling yet, but any day now it could happen. The problem I am having is that I have a limited mounting height between the two partial walls at the top of the stairs. Both walls are capped off at the top and have baseboards at the bottom. One wall has a wood railing that rounds into the wall at the very edge of the wall. The height between the baseboard and the railing is 29 inches, so I am guessing with mounting brackets for installation I am looking at a 27 inch tall gate that is at least 43 inches wide. This I am not finding anywhere (because of the height.) Has anyone used or know of a gate that I could mount on the outside of the stair walls instead of flush mounting it? Or one that would match my criteria for a flush mount? I am thinking this gate might work for mounting on the outside http://www.retract-a-gate.com/index.html but I am not so enamored with the looks of it. Any other ideas?
We went commando with our second kid. Baby gates are a whole lot of pain in the ass for a relatively low-risk situation.
Look for the gates that require no mounting hardware at all and have a foot pedal operation. They are the most convenient. Otherwise, go to home depot and get a few 1X4’s and custon cut some anchor boards to put on your walls for a few months. That means four long deck screws into your drywall per side and when the time is right you just pull them and patch little screw holes.
This is the one we used for our dogs and it worked great:
http://www.amazon.com/First-Years-Hands-Free-Gate/dp/B000058CC7
Dave