DIY – Free-Standing Pet Gate

Do you have a dog?
Do you want to keep that dog contained somehow – like off of your carpet with their muddy little paws?

We did.
We had two BIG dogs.
With BIG muddy feet.
AND they liked to greet people at the door… but not everyone was thrilled at the prospect of 200 lbs of dog running at them. We have an Electronic Dog Door so they can let themselves in whenever they like, and that’s great. It’s not so great when they’ve just gone out to empty their bladders and it’s been raining and all you can see if tiny pawprints on our hardwood flooring.

Then I saw this pet gate in a magazine:

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Perfect!
A pet gate that won’t leave marks on the door frames. Portable. Esthetically pleasing. Of course if you’re looking for something to keep your pets safe in the yard then this DIY project won’t be of much use to you. My friend recently told me about wireless fencing – sounds cool right?! For more information, you can check out The Goody Pet’s wireless dog fence price guide.

Back to my quest for an indoor gate now though… This 6-panel version can be so expensive!!

But it just looks like a few crib pieces hinged together?

So I got a crib – and let me tell you, I feel proud to have taken this crib off of the market. One leg was duct taped on. The entire thing was smoke-ridden.
I saved some baby’s life by grabbing it up before they had to sleep in it.
And it was $10!

I took the head-board and footboard of the crib (the tall ends) and gave them a good cleaning with TSP to remove the smell of smoke, grease, dirt and to create a clean surface for my spray paint to adhere to.
I used one can of “oil rubbed bronze” spray paint which gave me two coats on each piece of my DIY pet gate and then attached the two pieces with hinges.

I made a second DIY pet gate with the crib sides as well so that I could block off our family room to muddy paws as well.

I should tell you that this gate will tip over unless you add perpendicular boards to the bottom. For our purposes, our dogs didn’t realize it could tip, so they never attempted to push it.

I’d say add feet if you have a bouncy dog, but if you have an older pet that just needs a visual reminder, this DIY pet gate is fine.

This worked perfectly for our Old English Sheepdog and Golden Retriever. Miss Lacey on the other hand hates it, so we never use it. (It took a LOT of peanut butter to get her to even come near for photos)

Forget the hundreds of dollars they charge for these online – get a crappy crib off of Kijiji, add hinges and you’re done for the whopping price of about $20.

Odie only posed because he wanted peanut butter too. lol

Have a great one!

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