Building a fence

Several weeks ago I put up a safety gate by the stairs in our basement. This, of course, is to keep Malikai from getting access to the stairs, bathroom, or storage area in the basement.

We had a problem though. We can't use a tension gate (I really wish I could though, about half the price) because the slats in the stairs are too skinny. Malikai would only have to get the gate to move a half inch and the whole thing would fall down. So we got the kind that you screw into the wall. The only problem with this, is there are no studs near that area of the wall. So I bought a drywall anchor and used that to attach the gate to the wall.

Right away we could tell that the gate was too heavy for the anchors, so we would not be able to open and close it. We just leave it closed and climb over it. Everything went fine... until, that is, Malikai started to shake the gate. Now he loosened up the anchors and got them to move around in the wall. This resulted in a hole that was big enough to put my finger in.

As you can see, that isn't a small hole. The result is that the gate was very shaky. It was still holding up, but with every shake it was tearing up our wall even more. So, what do you do in a situation like this?

I got some slats of wood and used those to screw into, and attached the wood to the single stud that is on that wall. It holds better, but the weight of the gate is still too much for that wood to hold to the wall since the stud is at the far end of the wall. Maybe using another anchor to attach the wood to the wall might help? The gate holds a lot better now but it puts a lot of strain if I try to open or close the gate, so I have to keep it closed all the time still. The entire project cost me ~$5.00 (not including the price of the gate) and about an hour's worth of work. Malikai liked to sit near me while I was working, although he didn't really like the sound of the drill too much.



And here is a picture of the finished product.



Just because I can't help myself, here are a few pictures of Malikai for you to enjoy.







And the cutest picture yet...




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