Gates for top of stairs?

I am a first time mom with b/g 6 mo old twins. DS is not getting himself on all 4's so I know that crawling is coming soon... yikes. I have reseached baby gates and the information is overwhelming AND confusing. We have a post at the top of the stairs on one side and the wall on the other side. Anyone have experience who can tell me what they would recommend?? Additionally, how long (for those of you with older kids) do people usually leave gates up - both top stair gates and bottom stair gates.

Thanks for your time- I've probably spent too much time on line, researching, talking about it and now I've gotten smart and gone to experts- YOU!

 

We had the same situation you did and we ordered our gates online from One Step Ahead. We didn't put any gates at the bottom of the stairs, just at the top of one staircase and then another one at the entrace to our family room which has one step down. One of the gates we got is specifically for the situation you described. I'm trying to remember when we took our gates down and I think it was around when they were 2 1/2.

 

We bought an evenflow gate that was designed for the top of the stairs. Because we had out house built. I had them put 2x4's inside the wall where I knew the gate would go. I then used zipties to mount a pice of wood to the banister so that I would not need to drill a hole on the banister.

My gates are still up (kids are 8 and 5). They know that they are not to go downstairs in the morning if the gate is closed. We use it at night as a safety mesure as my 5 year old has to walk past the stairs to got the bathroom. My kids have never tried to climb over gates, so I never had to take them down for that reason. We have a second gate at the top of the stairs to the basement. It is there to keep the dog out of the basement when we are not home.

We did not use gates at the bottom of the stairs, but I did have a kidco Configure gate that blocked the back half of my house from the front, which meant that my son was not able to reach the stairs when he was younger.

T

 

We put up our baby gate at the bottom of the stairs when the boys started crawling, but have yet to put the one at the top. This is because they aren't allowed to play upstairs and are rarely walking up there without DH and I. We have the same kind of post/wall situation and I think I'm going to have to drill into the post. I'm going to wind up putting it up soon...probably this weekend, so I'll let you know if our gate works well!


ETA: I was online trying to find the kind of gate we have (The First Years brand) and came across this attachment. I'm going to order it and try it b/c I know we have to sell our house in the next 2 years.

 

We have the first years gates at the top and bottom of our stairs for DS...I HIGHLY recommend getting the hands free kind that you step on the lever to open...it is PRICELESS when you have your hands full...and don't worry, the step is pretty hard to do (it takes me shifting almost all of my weight onto one foot to get it all the way open) so you don't have to worry about your LO figuring it out...

We put ours up right when we moved into our 2 story and DS was 8 months old...but we would have had to do it earlier if we had been there sooner...you can take it down around 18 months (I felt like he was pretty good at stairs by then)...BUT two things: 1) it's nice to keep him contained to one floor of the house...sometimes we would leave it open and suddenly we would realize that he was upstairs...and too quiet... and 2) I got pregnant with twins, so they are staying up for a bit longer!

ETA: we did have to buy the attachments because our stairs were wider than the gates are...it gets a little pricey, but worth it's weight in gold.

 

I'm so glad you posted this. We are in the same situation and we actually rent our townhouse so we will probably have to buy the attatchments!

 

We used One Step Ahead for all of our gates. We still have ours up and they are just over 2. Good luck with your search.

 

We also use Evenflo as our top of the stairs gate and it's worked out really well!