Our almost two year old daughter loves to climb up and down the stairs. However, I still don’t like her to be on the stairs by herself. Now that we have another baby, it is more difficult to chase after her if she decides she wants to go upstairs. This makes me really appreciate the fabric covered board I made to serve as a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs. I made the gate when she first became mobile about a year ago and it is still working great for us!
At the bottom of the stairs, there is a wall on one side and a rail on the other side. Therefore, it seemed like it would be a little more difficult to install a regular baby gate there.
Instead, I made a fabric covered board that slides in between the rails and touches the wall on the other side of the stairs. I really like this solution instead of a typical gate because it can be moved around easily. It also looks a lot prettier than a metal gate!
The board can go on any of the three bottom steps. Putting the board on the first step stops our daughter from going on the stairs at all.
Putting the board on the second or third step allowed Julia to practice climbing up and down the steps when she was first learning without me worrying that she would fall and hurt herself.
It was pretty easy to make the fabric covered board. The supplies I used and steps to make the baby gate are listed below.
FYI – The batting and fabric came from Jo-Ann Fabric. The rest of the supplies came from Home Depot.
In order to determine what size to cut the plywood, I measured the width of the stairs from the wall to a few inches past the rails. This is so that the board would be long enough to stand up on its own only using the rails as support.
After determining that I would need a 41.5 inch wide by 24 inch tall board, I went to Home Depot to buy the plywood and have it cut. I bought a 1/2 inch piece of plywood. I am glad that I went with that size for the gate because it is strong without being too heavy.
When I got home, I sanded the edges of the plywood to make it smooth and to avoid splinters.
After that, I completely covered both sides of the plywood in batting using a staple gun to secure it to the board. There isn’t an exact method I followed. I just made sure the whole piece was covered. One thing to note is that I folded the batting over the edges and only used staples on the front and back of the plywood. I thought that would make the edges smoother and I wouldn’t have to worry about snagging the material when sliding the board in and out of the stairs.
When the board was completely covered in batting, I covered that with some pretty fabric. I wrapped it in a way so that it didn’t have any creases or staples on the front. The staples go all around the back edge of the board. The picture below shows one of the staples on the back of the board.
Like I said before, this has been working for us for about a year now. So far, it has kept Julia from hurting herself on the stairs. Fingers crossed that it keeps working!
Have you found any other solutions to keep little ones safe on the stairs? Let me know in the comments!
♥Jena♥
This is just what I was looking to do at our house. We have 2 grand daughters and didn’t want to do anything permanent or something we couldn’t easily put up and take down. I also was worried about damaging the wood with something temporary. This is a perfect solution….. Going to make this, thank you!
I’m so glad this is helpful! Good luck with your baby gate!