On your wireless... did you try 5GHz? My parents place is a nightmare for wifi, some of the walls are 3'+ of stone and I was having a nightmare trying to use WDS to chain APs to give them coverage in most of the house.

I actually ended up using powerline for one segment, but I tried 5GHz (which in my experience at home - in a wooden house - never seems to go more than 20 feet). It just cut like butter through the stone, which I really, really wasn't expecting...

Next visit there will be putting in dual-band simultaneous APs, as their iPhones obviously can't take advantage of the 11a signal directly....