Bought that extender, reverted my wifi bands to having the same name and password and tested a bit. Looks like it'll work but I don't have time tonight to have this going for 6 hours to see if it sticks.
I'm getting the sense that I WILL need to go back to segregating the bands. When I'm moving around my place, my phone loses the wifi connection at times, and I think maybe that it's going from the 5.0 it's on normally to the 2.4 as I get closer to where the extender is. I need my phone to be on the same 2.4 band as the smoker to keep control over it, so I'm thinking if I segregate them I can specify my phone to stay on the 2.4 and not have it bouncing around and losing connect with the smoker. Pretend I'm not a main administrator and advise if that make sense.
I'm gonna at least stay as is until my first attempt to make something, but kind of want to know if that will be the quick fix should I need it.
You don't need to be on the same band as the smoker.
Without knowing what kind of signal strength you have in these areas its hard to say exactly what your issue is. 2.4 kind of sucks and you run into alot of issues in regards to interference with that band compared to 5 ghz. Microwaves are notorious for causing problems in 2.4.
Are you an iphone or android guy? There are wifi scanner apps out there that will show you signal strength for each band and that can help identify if the problem is signal strength related or not.
Wifi Analyzer for Android (free)
Network Analyzer for iOS (3.99)
running that will give you a sense of what kind of signal issues you have.