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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 114 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
96 of 99 found the following review helpful:
Felt slightly misled by the description Nov 25, 2009
By T. Manning
The gate is sturdy and hardware mounted, so it can be used by stairs. Since it is so long, there is a little bit of "give" in the middle - it can be flexed out maybe an inch or two. My biggest gripe with this is that it is advertised as fitting openings up to 72". Our stairway is 74" but we figured that we could add a 2x4 to the wall to make it work. Not the most attractive option, but there are not a lot of gates this size that are also hardware mounted. Well, the gate itself is only 66" wide. The other 6 inches come from the allowance of 3" of screws showing on either side of the gate. So, yes it will fit a 72" wide doorway, but I felt it was a little misleading to not explain this in the description.
29 of 29 found the following review helpful:
 Great gate! Nov 21, 2009
By Elissa
This was easy to install, and works great. It's a bit of a learning curve to remember that there's a bar at the base, but once you trip over it once or twice, you'll remember that it's there. :-) Our 1-year-old pulls and tugs and bangs on this, and the cats jump on and over it all day long, and it doesn't budge. The door is easy to use, I can do it one-handed if I'm carrying the baby or groceries or whatever. The gate swings both ways, and in our case it's carpet on one side, tile on the other. If I open it to the carpet side, it will stay put, if I open it to the tile side it swings back. It does NOT shut and latch automatically, but that is part of what will keep the baby from figuring out how to use it for quite a while. It adjusts easily, fits our 53" wide living room doorway nicely, and actually still has one more expansion piece, so it could go much wider still. Also, it looks nice, and the holes that we had to put in the walls were pretty small, they'll be easy to caulk and paint over in a few years when we don't need the gate anymore.
A friend just asked for more detailed info on the baby gate, and I thought it would be useful to others to add it here.
It's about 2.75" between the bars, and each extension is about 7". The main part of the gate is 32", and the actual opening is about 19".
P.S. We've had these over a year now, and still love them. One is still in constant use, the other hangs out behind a set of shelves near the kitchen and comes out when we babysit smaller children or watch friends dogs to keep them out of the kitchen. We get lots of comments on how nice they are, and no one (not even us) ever notices the hardware on the doorway into the kitchen for the gate that's usually put away.
14 of 14 found the following review helpful:
Love, love, love this gate!! Jan 10, 2010
By happy-single-mom
"WI gal"
This is one of the best purchases I have ever made!! I have a one year old and two toy poodles and this gate works perfect for keeping them out of the entry way!! This way the dogs don't sneak out when people come over and my daughter doesn't get hit by the door either!! It was so easy to install-even though figuring out the extension length was a little tricky, but the screws for the extensions were easy enough to take out and move to figure out the right width!!
I previously just had a wood gate I had to step over (and so did my guests) which was an inconvienence. I would trip over it constantly! This gate was perfect for me because I needed a gate to span about 67" and this one fit the bill with room to spare! The gate is extremely secure, you have to put holes in the wall, but I would rather have that than those pressure mounted gates any day! The latch is easy to push with the ease of your thumb and you just lift the gate over the metal bar on the floor-which is another feature I love-the gate has the added security of the bar on the floor to hold the bottom of the gate into place! The gate swings either way and is not auto locking, which I don't mind. I would rather lift it up and close it myself so I know it's closed. The actual gate width is nice-it's a bit over 19 inches-I can walk thru with ease, even with the car seat. Over all, I would recommend this gate with high ratings!!
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Great metal gate Jan 20, 2011
By J. Beams
"JB"
Quality:
When I unpackaged the gate I noticed that one of the rails on one of the expansion sections has a bad weld, so that end of the rail isn't attached. I'm in the process of working with customer service to get a replacement piece.
Installation:
The instructions claim for a 59 1/2" opening that I should use 3 of the 4 expansion pieces, but I found that it actually will fit with all 4 expansion pieces and actually fits well and is very sturdy in this configuration. Anything less than around 59" will require removing at least one of the expansions though.
The mounting brackets for the bottom sections are quite tall, or my baseboards are just short. Either way, the top screw for these brackets isn't floats away from my baseboards. This can easily be fixed by adding some shims to fill in the gap between the baseboard and bracket though (does require some extra skill and tools).
Mounting the top brackets required some measuring (though you could probably eyeball it and get it well enough). I'm somewhat of a perfectionist though, so I also made sure everything was level. I found that the plastic on at least one of the brackets is warped a bit, so attaching it to the wall straightened it out and now the rotating part doesn't really 'lock' into place very tightly. Not a huge deal till my son figures out how those work, then I guess I can drill a hole through them add another screw in them to make sure he can't remove them.
I also found that if you adjust the top bolts so that the fence is tightly fit between the gap then it can make the gate hard to close, so a little bit of give actually works better for overall functionality.
There's some plastic/rubber covers to cover the screws that hold the sections together that I don't particularly like they way they look. They seem like afterthoughts, but I still put them on the top sections for 'safety'.
Use:
So far no failures of the gate or any other hardware. My 7-month old pulls himself up on the gate all day long and it doesn't give any. The only downside is that it doesn't give any, particularly when he bumps his head on it. I think I need to invest in a baby helmet if such a thing exists so he can learn to walk without getting brain damage.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Worked for us...72 inch opening..toddler tested & approved May 25, 2010
By H. C. Dawson
My wife and I needed a way to keep our twin toddlers out of the kitchen, since its a bit dangerous in there for them. The walkway into the kitchen is exactly 6 feet wide and I thought it would be a challenge to find a gate wide enough for the opening. Thankfully, this Summer Infant gate worked perfectly for us. First off, don't be disappointed if when you assemble the gate with all the extensions, it is not 6ft wide, however, the screws that attach to the side that connect to the wall supports stick out far enough and provide plenty of support once it's installed. From un-boxing to installation, the process took about 15-20 minutes. The instructions say you could install this to drywall, but I would not recommend that unless the gate isn't going to be "tested," meaning if will get yanked & pulled, because it will come right out of the drywall. For this gate to work at its maximum width, you must install the mounts into studs or a wood surface. Thankfully, the opening I installed in was wood. The true test was going to be my son or daughter pulling and yanking on the gate like good toddler do, and I'm happy to report that while there is considerable "give" in the center of the gate, the gate did pass the ultimate toddler test and withstood their onslaught. The door does open both ways but does NOT auto close. However, you can close it and lock it with one hand and it is quite sturdy. Highly recommended for larger openings.
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