Safety & Childproofing Services
Safety and childproofing is the residential trade that installs the hardware preventing the worst kind of household incident — hardware-mounted stair gates anchored into studs, NFPA-72-placed smoke and CO detectors, ADA 250-lb-rated grab bars, and whole-home childproofing — from $120 for a single anchor or detector to $700 for whole-home childproofing. A baby due in six weeks and a house that was never set up for one. A stair gate still in the Amazon box because the banister and the wall do not line up. Smoke detectors from 2014 that chirp every six months and get the battery pulled instead. Handis sends one vetted handyman with metal brackets, NFPA-compliant detectors, and ADA-rated grab bars in the truck — every piece needs a stud, a level, and the right anchor for the wall behind it.
Services
What Does Safety & Childproofing Include?
Safety and childproofing is one trade with one core skill — find the stud or the rated solid-mount anchor, then back the hardware into it. The work covers four service families on this sub-hub (whole-home childproofing, hardware-mounted stair gates, NFPA-72 smoke and CO detector swaps, and ADA 250-lb grab bars), plus a fifth — anti-tip furniture anchoring — cross-linked from the canonical mounting page. Plastic strap kits, suction-cup grab bars, and over-the-counter pressure gates at the top of a staircase are the three failures that show up over and over again, and all three are agnostic to the brand on the box, so you do not book the same job twice.
Childproofing Package (Whole-Home)
Cabinet locks (magnetic on quality kitchen and bath cabinets, adhesive latches on the rest), tamper-resistant outlet covers, corner guards on coffee tables and fireplace hearths, stove knob covers, toilet locks, and pressure gates at doorways and room dividers. Done in one visit, walked room by room, with the items most parents miss — the floor register, the laundry detergent shelf, the under-sink chemical bay — included. From $250 for a small two-room scope to $700 for whole-home. Stair gates and anti-tip anchoring are separate line items on the same visit.
Childproofing Package — cabinet locks, outlet covers, corner guards, pressure gates
Stair Gate Installation
Hardware-mounted gates at the top and the bottom of stairs, anchored into wall studs or rated banister kits — never pressure-mounted at the top, where the gate can be pushed out by a child leaning on it. Banister-to-wall conversion kits for the common case where one side is a banister post and the other is drywall. From $120 for a single gate on standard drywall to $300 for a banister-to-banister run with a Y-spindle kit.
Stair Gate Installation — top, bottom, banister kits, hardware-mount
Smoke & CO Detector Replacement (Battery / 10-Year Sealed)
Battery-powered and 10-year sealed-lithium replacements for smoke alarms and combination smoke/CO units. Placement per NFPA 72 (National Fire Alarm Code) — one on every level, one inside every bedroom, one outside every sleeping area, and CO alarms within 10 feet of every sleeping-area door. Smoke detectors expire at 10 years, CO detectors at 5 to 7 — we read the manufacture date on the back of each unit and swap what is past due. Hardwired detectors on a new circuit are outside this trade and route to a licensed Washington L&I electrician. From $120 for a single battery unit to $350 for a six-unit whole-home swap.
Smoke & CO Detector Replacement — battery, 10-year sealed, NFPA 72 placement
Grab Bar Installation (ADA 250-lb Rated)
Stainless-steel ADA-compliant grab bars rated to 250 pounds, installed in showers, beside toilets, and at tub edges. Mounted into studs or a rated solid-mount anchor — never into drywall alone, never with a suction-cup base. The standard install backs the bar into blocking behind the tile; on plaster or thin tile, longer-shank toggles or a fender-washer plate distribute the load. From $180 per bar to $500 for a three-bar bath set.
Grab Bar Installation — ADA 250-lb, shower, toilet, tub
Anti-Tip Anchoring (Cross-Linked to Mounting)
Anti-tip anchoring for dressers, bookshelves, TVs on stands, and freestanding ranges is the same trade — metal L-brackets bolted into studs, the CPSC tracks one tip-over incident in an emergency room every 53 minutes — but the canonical page lives under Mounting and Hanging. Book it from there; we will combine it with childproofing or grab bars into one visit and one trip charge.
Heavy-Item Anchoring & Anti-Tip — dressers, bookshelves, TVs, ranges, water heaters
Safety & Childproofing Pricing
Final pricing depends on item count, wall types, and whether the visit also covers anti-tip anchoring (cross-linked from Mounting). Each service page lists detailed pricing for that family of work. Multi-task visits are cheaper per task than booking each item separately. Request a free estimate for an accurate quote.
Tell us what is on the list — childproofing, gates, detectors, grab bars — and we will quote the full visit.
Why Homeowners Book Handis for Safety Work
Most safety jobs fail the same three ways — a pressure gate at the top of the stairs that a two-year-old can shove out by leaning on it, a grab bar suction-cupped to tile that comes off the day someone needs it most, and a smoke detector that gets disconnected after the third false alarm and never goes back up. After a few hundred childproofing walkthroughs across Seattle drywall, plaster over lath, tile-over-cement-board, and old wet-plaster bathrooms, every one of those failures has a fix in the truck. We anchor into studs by default and we read the manufacture date on every detector before we leave.
Hardware-mounted at the top of every staircase
Pressure-mounted gates work for doorways and room dividers — the wall takes the load and a small bump does not move the gate. At the top of stairs the load profile is different: a child leaning into the gate puts horizontal force on the tension bars, and pressure-mounted gates can pop out from a sustained push. We hardware-mount every top-of-stairs gate into studs or a rated banister kit. Bottom-of-stairs and doorway gates we will pressure-mount when the wall supports it; otherwise we hardware-mount those too.
Detector placement per NFPA 72
The National Fire Alarm Code (NFPA 72) sets the minimum: a smoke alarm on every level of the home including the basement, one inside every bedroom, one outside every sleeping area, and CO alarms within 10 feet of every sleeping-area door. We walk the house, count what is there, read the manufacture date on each unit (smoke detectors expire at 10 years per NFPA 72; CO at 5 to 7 per manufacturer), and replace what is past due. Hardwired interconnect on a dedicated circuit is electrician work and routes to a licensed Washington L&I contractor.
Grab bars backed into studs, not drywall
ADA grab bars must hold a 250-pound static load — the over-the-counter suction-cup bars sold for travel do not meet that rating and fail the wall. We back every grab bar into a stud, into blocking behind the tile, or into a rated solid-mount anchor sized to the load (longer-shank toggles plus a fender-washer plate when stud spacing does not align with the bar). The bar gets pull-tested before we leave.
Walked room by room, not from a checklist
Childproofing-from-a-kit misses the things in your house — the wall outlet behind the couch your child can reach by climbing the armrest, the unsecured floor register in the hallway, the laundry detergent shelf two feet off the ground. We walk every room with you, note what you have already covered, and install only what is actually missing. The walkthrough is included in the whole-home package.
Insured, background-checked, 30-day workmanship guarantee
Safety work puts our team in nurseries, bathrooms, and bedrooms. Every Handis handyman carries liability insurance and has cleared a background screening before the first job. If a gate loosens, a grab bar pulls, a cabinet lock fails, or a detector we mounted falls within 30 days because of our workmanship, we come back and fix it at no extra charge.
Estimate
List the rooms, the items, and any specifics you know — wall types (drywall, plaster, tile), stair layout (wall-to-wall or banister), bath layout, and detector count. We will send back a clear estimate for the full visit.
What Our Customers Say
Recent safety and childproofing reviews from verified customers.
Whole-home childproofing six weeks before our son was due. The tech walked every room with us before he touched a screw — flagged the floor register in the hallway, the magnetic latch the previous owner had left half-installed under the kitchen sink, and a pressure gate that had been put at the top of the stairs by the previous family (which he replaced with a hardware-mounted one). Done in one afternoon.
Three grab bars in the master bath — one in the shower, one at the tub edge, one beside the toilet. The previous owner had stuck a suction-cup bar on the shower tile and called it good. The tech ripped that off, drilled into the studs behind the tile (the bath had blocking already, which he checked first), and installed three ADA bars. Pull-tested each one with his full weight.
Smoke and CO detector swap — six units, all past the 10-year mark. The tech read the manufacture date on each one before he started, confirmed five were expired and one was the wrong type for the location (a smoke-only outside a bedroom, no CO). Replaced all six with 10-year sealed-lithium combos, mounted per NFPA 72. No more chirping at 3 a.m.
Stair gate at the top of the stairs where one side was the banister and the other was drywall. The kit we bought did not fit. The tech had a banister-to-wall conversion in the truck — anchored the wall side into a stud, clamped the banister side without drilling into the wood. Solid as a rock. Took 40 minutes.
Combined safety visit — childproofing in the kitchen and the kids' rooms, two stair gates, a grab bar for my mother-in-law's bath, and three smoke detector swaps. Half-day block. Everything done in one visit, one cleanup, one trip charge. The tech also pointed out that our freestanding range needed its anti-tip bracket installed (it never had been) and added that to the list.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about safety and childproofing — pricing, scope, what NFPA 72 requires, and what routes to a licensed contractor.