Just before Christmas Toby really upped the stakes in the ‘I want to get everywhere’ game by working out how to open the doors. He’s been able to reach the door handles for quite a while but he suddenly put two and two together and simply closing a door is no longer enough to keep him contained. Downstairs we’ve been using our Lindam Play Pen as a room divider for a while now and we can safely leave Toby on his side with his toys (although he doesn’t like it too much these days unless one of us is in there with him). Upstairs though we didn’t have any safety gates and it would only take a second for Toby to be out of his room and taking a headlong tumble down the stairs, especially seeing as, along with opening doors, his other new found love is walking up and down the stairs (which he can only manage with our assistance at the moment!).
So this is where the Lindam Easy Fit Plus Deluxe Safety Gate comes in. We decided the best thing would be to fit a gate across our upstairs hallway. This means Toby can still get from his room to our room, which I thought might be useful when he moves out of his cot, although I may well live to regret this if we start getting a midnight visitor somewhere down the line. It also keeps him out of the bathroom and our spare room/office as well as safe from the stairs. We chose the Easy Fit Plus Deluxe gate because it is pressure fit gate, meaning no drilling into the walls. We live in a new build and our walls are seemingly made of cardboard so fixing anything to them is a nightmare. It’s worth noting that Lindam don’t recommend you use a pressure fit gate directly at the top of the stairs.
Fitting the gate was very simple. It is supplied with plastic cups and sticky pads to attach them to the walls (you can also screw through the middle of the cup if you prefer), and an Allen key to tighten the gate once it’s in place. We also needed an extension as the gap we wanted to fit the gate in was slightly too big. Lindam make a variety of extensions in order for their gates to fit most spaces. The only tricky part about fitting the gate was removing one of the plastic plugs in order to attach the extension. In fact we couldn’t get one of them out at all and so had to fit the extension to the other side of the gate instead. This wasn’t really a problem but was slightly annoying.
The gate opening and closing handle can be operated with one hand, which is essential when your other hand is occupied with a toddler intent on escape down the stairs! There is also an additional optional second lock at the base of the gate for added security. I would just say you need to be careful with the handle – if it is left up Toby does like to push it down and it has quite a snap so could very easily trap little fingers.
Overall we are very pleased with the Lindam Easy Fit Plus Deluxe safety gate. It does exactly what we need it to and I was delighted with how easy it was to fit (and without filling my walls full of holes!). I’m not sure Toby is quite so convinced about kept safe from the stairs though!
Lindam have a whole range of different safety gates so if this one isn’t quite what you’re after you can be sure they’ll have one to do the job.
The Lindam Easy Fit Plus Deluxe safety gate has an RRP of £23.99 and the 7cm extension which we used is available separately with an RRP of £8.99.
