This gate has steel columns at each end. They are 1.5" wide with three 1/8" thick sides and an open side facing inward into which the ends of the expandable grid retract. The grid is made up of 9/16" 4-sided hollow aluminum alloy rods and steel rivets. The column on the fixed end has hinges, and is attached in the same way that a door is attached in a door frame, so that the hinge pin faces toward the direction in which the door opens. In this case, it is done so that the gate may be swung away from the wall where it is attached if/when desired.I installed the gate on the inside of a glass patio door for added security there. Its height was taller than the listed 6.5 feet. Maybe I just don't understand how expandable gates are measured, being that the height of the expandable part gets shorter when expanded. In any case, the outer steel columns and the expandable section, when all collapsed together, were a little over 7 feet high. Too high to work where needed.No big deal, as it turned out. It was pretty easy to cut the whole thing down to a perfect height before the installation. I temporarily secured it in the fully collapsed state with three strips of masking tape around it, clamped it onto a workbench between two pieces of wood, and cut off 9 inches above a row of rivets across the top with a circular saw and a 7 1/4" steel-cutting blade. After a little filing on the cut ends and touching up with black Rustoleum, I pulled the plastic end-plugs from the cut-off pieces of the rods and pushed them into the open ends of the shortened rods.This gate is designed to be installed in the recess of an opening, not flat against the wall around it. And it is designed to expand right to left from the fixed end; that is, right to left as viewed from the side on which you're standing when you close and lock it. It does not have a hasp and staple for locking the gate as are pictured in the listing, but it came with a 9.5-inch steel bracket into which the left column enters when the gate is closed. The gate can be locked by inserting a padlock shank through corresponding holes in the bracket and the column. These holes must be lined up well enough for the shank to fit through both of them at once, so some care must be taken when positioning and mounting the bracket. It can only be screwed into place through its backside, so the end column can't be in it when the screws are driven in. This bracket, with an irregular contour, has a top end and a bottom end, which is not marked or specified in the instructions. The top end is where the locking hole is, so it should be installed in that orientation.Since the recess of our sliding glass door is narrow, the locking bracket would have made contact with the sliding-glass door handle, so I created a simple mounting work-around. This is just pieces of 2x6" boards, a long one on the fixed side with hinges and a shorter one on the bracket side (see pictures). These were screwed flat against the wall into studs behind the drywall with 3-inch screws. (The immediate areas on each side of the opening behind the drywall fortunately had two studs very close together.) The gate and bracket were then screwed onto the facing sides of the wood.I did not use any of the supplied fastening hardware. The package contained 1-inch wood screws and plastic anchors. Too short, in my opinion, for adequately securing the steel columns and locking bracket. I'd say 2-inch screws or longer would be much better for this purpose.There are also two stamped-steel handles and four machine screws for attaching one or both handles on one or both sides of the left column, the one that must be moved back and forth when opening or closing the gate. There are holes in the column with threaded brass inserts for the screws, but on the side where I needed a handle, the top threaded hole has a larger inner diameter than the screws. Could not remove these inserts in order to swap out the oversized one.After failing to find any alternate machine screw in the house that fit these threads, I did a work-around by attaching a spare porcelain drawer-pull knob at that hole. Just had to shorten its screw to work with the length of the insert for tightly screwing the knob in place. That actually looks better than the steel handle would have, and works just as well for manipulating the gate without having fingers in the grid.Overall, I like the design and quality of this gate. I bought it after first considering a similar gate made entirely of steel, but that one was about $100 higher in price. This one is good for the money spent, and the end result is good enough for a 5-star rating.