Child safe Picket Fence / Door Barrier


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Child safe door barriers or safety gates / picket fences are a must in homes with little babies and toddlers. They are very effective in keeping kids away from areas within the home they are not intended to be in. At the same time, these baby proof doors also help create a safe boundary, within which kids are free to roam about and play.

Potential areas where the babies need to be kept away from are the kitchens, balcony areas (learn how to baby proof your balcony) and stairways. This DIY door barrier / picket fence was built to keep my niece away from the kitchen especially when the grinder is on. We built this fence using wooden sticks that are about 2 inches wide and half an inch thick.Considering it was supposed to be baby safe, the first thing I did was to ensure all the edges are made blunt and the surface is smoothed using sand paper.

child proof barrier supplies
Child safe barrier - Supplies
The wooden sticks were nailed together (7 vertical sticks nailed / screwed onto 3 horizontal sticks). We made two similar gates which we joined together using regular door hinges in order for the doors to half open. What you see below is work in progress for one of the gates. The gate was painted (learn how to paint wood) and varnished for protection.

Baby proof picket fence - Work in progress
Baby proof barrier doors - WIP
The two gates were joined together using hinges and one side of the gate was fixed  (again using regular door hinges) to a wooden panel installed on the side of the wall. You can see a break in the middle of the gate indicating the hinges (marked in the picture below).

Child proof picket fence-door barrier
Child safe picket fence
As you can see, we had to coordinate the color to ensure that it matches the kitchen cabinet colors. Fortunately for us, the kitchen entrance and the Grinder section were at 90 degrees to each other. The installation was made in such a way that the kitchen entry is blocked when the gate is closed... and the grinder area is closed when it is open. And because it was along the corner, it also became non-intrusive providing easy access to the kitchen when the grinder is not in use.

baby proofing the kitchen using child safe door barrier
Baby Proof / Child Proof fence / door


Over to you : Tell me how have you baby proofed your home ? Did you have an off the shelf product installed ? Did you make one yourself ? Share your thoughts and ideas.

P.S. Linking in : Colours Dekor, Lines Across My Face, Kreative Korner

11 comments:

Ambika said...

This should be pretty useful right, nice! Which paint did you use on the wood Preethi?

Patricia Torres said...

Thats a lovely idea!!

Woodooz said...

Hi Ambika, thanks.. it did turn out pretty useful and incidentally we didn't have to compromise on the look and feel. As for the paint, used paint powder (Available in brown and black), mixed it with wood stain (Ramson), diluted with thinner and mixed until a viscous yet free flowing consistency is attained. Applied it with paint brush and finally varnished.

Patricia, thanks a lot again for your feedback :)

Neha@ All things beautiful said...

Its useful and also looks great!

Sanghamitra Bhattacherjee(Mukherjee) said...

This should be very useful! Looks beautiful too:) Thanks for sharing.

Tanya Anurag said...

Looks good and very useful with toddlers in the house.

Thanks for linking up at Tea-Time Thursdays @ Kreative Korner. Your post added to the celebration. Party for this week is going on now. Hope to see you there.

http://tanyaanurag.blogspot.com/2011/08/tea-time-thursdays-3-and-features.html

Somu (Woodooz) said...

Hi Neha, thanks a lot... It was useful for sure !!! We decided to do a fence rather than just having a ply blocking the way... turned out to our expectation.

Hi Sanghamitra, thanks... it turned out to be quite functional... and non-intrusive too...

Hi Tanya, thanks for the opportunity for the link up... Will sure be back with our other projects in the future. :)

vinayoommen said...

This is a great picket fence. I had done something similar too before I ventured into woodworking. I used the circular white PVC electrical piping to make a picket fence. The wooden one that you have made looks very nice!

Somu said...

Hi vinay, Thanks... My initial thought was to make it with either PVCs or curtain rods... But given the fact that I had to match the Cabinet color schemes, I decided to do it completely with wood... Share a picture of the picket fence if you have it... I may only opt for rods the next time someone wants a fence :)

plastic stanchions said...

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Somu (Woodooz) said...

Plastic Stanchions,
Thanks... I keep working on my posts even after they are published... Glad you liked the way this post was detailed.

Cheers.
Somu

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