Mary2e

I've posted before about the difficulties I'm having with only my phone when on wifi at home and we all determined the equipment should be replaced.

Now we have to decide what to replace it with.

Current set up:
Combo router in basement in a corner close to the cable entry point
Range extender on 1st floor near door to basement

Future usage
We need good coverage on the first floor PLUS my husband is moving his office from the basement to the second floor. We don't have a cat-5 cable up there, though we probably could run one. As such, if we don't, he will be using the wifi in his new office.

Should we just put the router on the first floor? Downside is that all the hard wiring is located at the corners of the house, so the wifi signal might not be that strong going upstairs

Should we also buy a WAP to put on the first floor? It may be less obtrusive than a full router/wifi set up and we could more likely put it in the center of the house on top of a curio

Should we buy a new range extender instead of the WAP? I was told they can be very flaky. Ours worked fine for years and now it intermittently stops allowing connections just to my phone unless I restart it.

It was also suggested we just buy a second router to put on the first floor so the wifi is one floor closer to my husbands new office.

Will be going out shortly, but really look forward to all your opinions - the collective knowledge here is outstanding. ^