Q: Problems with poor wifi signal strength, need help?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated? This is a lengthy explanation. Thanks in advance.

I have a 3rd generation Airport Extreme wirelessly bridged to a 4th generation Time Capsule. I have noticed only mild increase in signal strength.  Surprisingly I have only 1 – 2 bars of signal strength when standing next to the bridged Airport Extreme. There are areas of the house that continue to have very weak coverage ranging from 0 – 2 bars depending on the day and others that continue to have no wifi coverage.

The house has Cat 5 cable in all rooms. Most rooms only have a phone jack wired to the end of the Cat 5 cable but two rooms have data ports. All the wires (phone and data) run to the same junction box and are connected to, what appears to be, a simple parallel bridge.  (There are a couple unused access points on the bridge. A few years back, I ran an additional line for a phone by simply pressing the colored wire into the corresponding site and the phone works fine)

It was suggested to plug the two routers directly into the data ports rather than have them communicate wirelessly. When doing this, I had no signal at the other end and the phone stopped working.

What is the best way to fix the weak wifi signal problem?

1.     Do I need to tweak my current wireless set up? (FYI, In the Airport Utility, both devices are listed and have green dots)

2.     Do I need to buy an additional Airport Extreme to bridge to the Time Capsule to cover the current dead areas? (unless there is something I should do different in the set up, hesitant to do this, since I have only seen a marginal boost with my current bridge)

3.     Would it be better to use the existing cat 5 cable and create a functional “hard wired” network that I can use to connect the two wireless routers? (If this is the answer, is this something relatively simple that I can do myself or should I hire a professional?)

Thanks again.