I have bad wireless coverage in the part of the house where I hope to utilize the Netgear router.
I'm trying to configure the Netgear as an Access Point, per the DD-WRT instructions here:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Access_Point
Any help would be appreciated!
Do a hard reset on the second router.
If you want to connect two routers with an ethernet cable, so that all devices connected to either of them can communicate with each other, plug an ethernet cable into the LAN (Not WAN) port of each router, set the IP to the second router to the same LAN IP address as the first router PLUS ONE (eg. 192.168.1.2), disable dhcp on the second router, and set it to a different channel as the first.
If you want to connect two routers with an ethernet cable so that the clients on one router are isolated from those on the other you need to use IP table rules to do this fully. However, you can do rudimentary isolation by plugging the ethernet cable from the first router's LAN port to the second router's WAN port, set the IP of the second router to a DIFFERENT Subnet, (eg 192.168.2.1 - Plus one to third octet if using 255.255.255.0 as subnet mask) and leave dhcp enabled on the second router.
If that's all you're doing, the first place I'd look is to wiring/cabling issues, because that's fine. Just make sure you're using a LAN port on the second router, not the WAN port, and make sure the IP address you use isn't in use elsewhere. However, you're not having an IP conflict - if you were, it wouldn't work at all, hence my comment on cabling issues.