Baby Gate to Hell

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.We finally decided on a baby gate. After much debate and consideration of everyone's opinions, we settled on the gate pictured above. As you can see, it is long enough to stretch across the entire opening, and looks and feels quite sturdy. I love the soft mesh feature, too. The only semi-problem is that it attaches to the walls. Matt and I were hoping to avoid damaging our walls, but we came to the conclusion that it was worth risking the damage if it met all our other requirements.

So yesterday we went and bought this gate. Anxious to install it and get the play area set up, we went right to work as soon as Patrick went to bed. We drilled all the holes, as instructed, then attached one end to the wall and began stretching the rest of the gate to attach it to the other wall. The attached end ripped right out, leaving big holes in our wall. Obviously we were frustrated.

We scrutinized the instructions. We'd followed them to the letter. They even included instructions for the situation that we had--attaching straight to a wall, not a doorframe. We had done nothing wrong. The problem was either with the gate--not designed for use directly on a wall, perhaps--or our house.

We must be stupid, because we decided to try again, around the corner, which felt much more secure. Sure enough, one hole partly drilled and the drill stopped. It had hit metal. Yes, metal in our walls. We're still clueless as to why the builders of our house put metal in our walls.

We just shrugged and tried again. This time we pulled out our stud finder to search for a better location to fasten it, one that would hold the screws but not a metal spot. (Ok, I could joke about the stud finder all day, but I'll spare you.)

We found a stud, according to our cheap stud finder (no wonder it went off near Matt...heehee). We drilled a hole. It apparently found plywood or something else not stud-like. The drill wouldn't easily drill through it. So we gave up. There is something wrong with that wall that absolutely will not allow anything to be fastened to it. How useless is it as a play area when you can't even attach a baby gate to the wall?

Today we went back to Babies R Us--again. We took back the baby gate I loved that our house didn't and were planning to exchange it for another gate. We were uncertain as to what to do. We still don't like the idea of the two gates on either end of the whole area, especially because of how limited our choices would be when we could only use pressure-mounted gates. We finally settled on this one.

I'll be honest that there are some things about this solution that I really don't like. But at least it's not permanent, it requires no more holes in our wall, and it can be moved from room to room as needed. I don't like that the whole play area won't be used for several years when he graduates from needing a gate, but it's the best solution given our complicated situation. Pictures to follow as soon as we get it from walmart.com.

Unfortunately this baby gate drama doesn't end there. In the course of our incredibly productive day, we found several other problems. Here's what we ended up doing yesterday:

1. Matt mowed the lawn.

2. I did four loads of laundry, one as a result of...

3. Matt washed the car. He went through more towels than expected because of...

4. When he got the towels from their location under the guest bathroom sink, he noticed they were damp. Later he checked again and found a leak under the sink. My handy husband managed to fix our plumbing leak on his own (with some advice from his dad). That means we found two problems with our house just yesterday, though--the wall and this leak. Both are things that could have been avoided if the house had been built right in the first place.

5. We attempted to install a baby gate.

6. In the process we created ten big holes in our wall, so Matt filled them with spackle and repainted them.

7. While the touch-up paint was out, Matt searched the house for other spots that could use touching up.

Oh, in addition to all these new problems, we still have a stinky closet and bathroom. Our efforts to get rid of the smell are helping, but it's not gone. Our neighbor, whose house was built the same time as ours, told us yesterday that he's having a problem with plumbing in their house, to the point that they have sewer gas stinking up their kitchen because of the faulty plumbing. His house is about to undergo major repairs to fix the problem. Now we're hoping and praying there is a dead animal rotting in our attic, because that will be much simpler than having sewer gas, which means a corner of our house knocked down and rebuilt, essentially.

As you can tell, this weekend has not exactly gone as planned. It's been a comedy of errors, one problem after another. I have no idea how Matt and I have kept our good humor. I guess it could be worse, though. Now that the weekend is quickly ending, we have a house that is in no worse shape than it was to begin with, despite our mishaps. If anything, it's in better shape, now that the leak is fixed and the spots on the walls have been touched up. Either way, I'm hoping next weekend is a little less exciting.