The next step of securing the baby from ladders is making a sliding baby gate for ground floor -I made a folding baby gate for the second floor before, here you can see its instructables.-

We don’t have enough space for other kind of doors so sliding is a must. Time is also very restricted so I chose to cut holes from solid wood panels instead of cutting wooden laths and then compounding them with glue.

Step 1:

The sliding door has 2 main parts. Number one is the fixed part and number two is the sliding part. The sliding part must be seated fully inside of the fixed part when the door is open. After making some calculations for instance the width of the ladder, I decided to widen the fixed part. I needed to drill holes and use small wooden sticks next to adhesive to make compound greater.

Step 2:

In order to move the sliding panel smoothly, I needed a top cap on the fixed panel -to have the sliding panel stay on track- and a drawer rail attached to the bottom of the sliding panel. To attach the sliding panel to the rail, I used an extra piece on bottom because the thickness of the sliding panel itself wasn’t enough to be screwed into the rail.

Step 3:

Time to mount the rail and the fixed part on the ladder. I applied silicone on this step. For ground adherence, it is enough. The fixed part is also mounted to the wall by 6 screws. Lastly, first lock is mounted to the sliding door. This lock will prevent the sliding panel from tumbling which means baby can’t push the door enough to down it.

Step 4:

Ok, if baby pushed forward he could down the sliding panel. We took precaution for this scenario on the last step. But.. Another lock is essential. The door is naturally bidirectional. It slides from left to right or vice versa. In order to prevent baby from sliding the door or in other words opening the door, we need to lock the shifting to the left. Thus, we have 2 strong locks covering different aspects and the baby can’t move the sliding panel at all.