A truly hands-free gate!

My husband and I first bought 2 of the First Years Hands-Free Gate to contain our overly energetic 70-pound yellow lab, and they remain in service now that our little girl is crawling and trying to walk. The gate features a foot pedal that a grown-up pushes down on, and a knee plate that you use to open the gate, thus making it hands-free. It fits openings 29-34" without an extension.

Before I go into the details, I thought I should state that The First Years has redesigned the foot pedal from previous versions of the gate, and it is super strong. (They also send you a free replacement if the pedal breaks -- but this has always been their policy, even before the stronger pedal.)

What we liked:

* Durable -- we NEVER had a problem with the foot pedal, EVER. And we constantly used the thing.
* Comes with a little wrench-like tool for turning the mounting nuts.
* The gate is pressure-mounted, and the pressure-mounting scheme actually allows the bottom width to be different from the top width (ie, accounts for baseboard molding).
* The thing doesn't budge once it's installed properly. At all. The reason we got it was the dog liked to run and jump on people when they came to the house. Contained behind the gate, all she could do was jump on the gate. 70 pounds of dog constantly jumped on both our gates and they never moved an inch. My daughter now likes to crawl over to it and stand up and then hang off the thing, and it holds and holds.
* Easy to clean - just wipes down.
* Nothing to climb on. It's super-safe, because there are no horizontal footholds above the floor.
* Baby can't get through it. The foot pedal requires a good amount of pressure to get it open. A grownup has to WANT to get it open. No way my daughter could ever open it.
* Swings either direction.
* Extension kits available for up to 5" on either side. You can use up to 2 extensions per gate -- one on each side.

What we didn't like:

* If you have a doorway that exactly meets the lower end of the width spec at the bottom, you may have to squeeze it in by removing one of the washers. (We did.)
* Can't put it in front of a door, like baby's nursery. The pedal makes it impossible.
* You have to be *really* careful removing the gate. The pressure mount sits so tight, that you can actually remove paint from walls if you don't loosen the gate sufficiently before removal. (There is a temporary apartment from our cross-country move with some interesting paint flake patterns as a result.)
* Extension kits are expensive. Count on doubling the cost of the gate if you need to use 2 extenders. Considering that the extenders just make the gate wider and don't actually have moving parts, that was a bit frustrating.

Bottom line: we constantly recommend this gate to anyone who will listen.