where art thou, wifi?

We plan on putting the wifi in the pantry at that red dot down below. From this location runs all the cable-cable and CAT 5e network cable. But I've been worried that the signal may not be strong enough to reach the master bedroom and the nether reaches of the living room. It seems like wifis generally reach the 40-foot range, but stuff in-between (walls, wires, toilets, fancy faucets, tile, cans of ravioli) will decrease that range (each circle below is at a 10-foot increment away from wifi central). At one point, I thought about building an extension out of the pantry along the ceiling into the hallway with screens on the sides such that we could put the wifi station there to extend its range. Nobody liked that idea.

Last night I'm surfing the cost of security camera systems and come across something called a "wireless access point". In short, it's a wifi placed where you want it in the house on a wall or ceiling as long as you have network cable there. In other words, you decide where you want it, and you install it there.

These critters are powered and work their wifi magic over CAT 5e. So instead of installing the wifi at the red dot, we can install it at the orange dot (and another one upstairs if we so choose). The one I stumbled upon was not cheap ($300 + another 100 to 200 bucks for power supplies and network boxes). But I found a cool one made by Ubiquiti called UniFi, and it's only $70: that's cooler than rabid rabbits rapidly riveting robots!

On the down side, it looks like I have more wiring to do this weekend... Fortunately I bought a bajillion feet of CAT 5e (and have only used half a bajillion).