well, ended up trying to go the powerline adapter route- what a hassle! not from the hardware though; they worked perfectly when they were on the same circuit but I literally had it plugged in one outlet on the wall and it worked perfect. walked around to the other side of the wall, plugged into another outlet and the dang thing did not work.
returned purchase and got an extender. works well, however there is no option to change the channel: it defaults to the channel of the SSID it is extending....
in my experience, and at my own home, I have all three access points on channels 1, 6, and 11 and I get near seamless routing. oh well, I seriously doubt they will be as attentive to detail on their network as I am