Baby gate ... ACTIVATE!!!

We have come around to the need for more physical boundaries in raising our two small children.  Nicholas in particular is excellent at unloading drawers, hanging around the hot stove, and most recently getting into the refrigerator.  Maren would find random objects left in the refrigerator and Nicholas would try to help himself to the large pitcher of juice. Lexi, who is now very mobile in her walker, can't stand to let the party in the kitchen go on without her, and so the kitchen has become a reasonably dangerous place to be.  Since I had just finished a block at school and had a free weekend, I set about finding a way to seal off the kitchen from our young brood.  It also served as a convenient and needed mother's day gift.

The design is pretty basic.  It is just a 2x4 rectangle with PVC pipes for bars.  We were going to paint the PVC, but the paint wouldn't stick. Instead, sanding had them looking nice and white with no big black letters.  I measured Lexi's head to figure out how close together they needed to be.  4.5" was the magic number.  I added a corner to match the slant of our counters which also helps hold it up.  Under the counter I used a big ring screw and a ceiling hook on the cabinet which just slide together.  On the wall I just screwed in some small pieces of 2x4 and drilled aligning holes  which we can drop a dowel through.  Maren did all the painting and which is just some leftover wall paint, and some felt pads on the bottom finished it off.  You can take it down and out of the way or put it up in about 10-15 seconds.  So far it has been sturdy, and effective in keeping out the kids.  Hopefully it will hold up as the child flood continues to pound it.