Khurt, I've been wrestling with my home network for weeks and reading a ton -- this is the clearest description I've seen anywhere -- including of course Apple's own near-useless documentation.

I have one question for you anyone else in the comment string. I have the exact same setup as you - a TC, an AE and two AX's. Not a big house, so this should be easy. Followed your steps exactly. The AX's are giving me trouble though. I can't get them to join the WDS - when I type the MAC addresses in and then update, the update just hangs. But no problem adding the AX. And if I just create a regular network I can get the AX's to join no problem, and they appear in the iTunes dropdown for speaker destinations, but when I click on either destination I get a "could not connect to the network" error. Anyone have any trouble getting their AX's connected to the WDS?