Wired Bridge?

[diablo3dfx]

I apologize if this is a repeat, but my search skills failed to find what I'm looking for.

I currently have an TP-Link TL-WR1043ND in Wireless bridge mode connecting the wired devices in my bedroom to the wireless router in the living room, some 40ish feet away.

Recently my connection has been intermittently interrupted to the point where I start power cycling devices trying to find the problem. But the problem doesn't go away after cycling. It will however go away in a few minutes by itself... Almost as if my downstairs neighbor has a massively powerful microwave and its killing my connection.

My question - if I run a hard wire between the living room router and my bridge configured router, can I configure the bridge to connect over the wire instead of over wireless? Through the WAN port perhaps? I'm looking at the Screenshots of Basic config (bridge) and I think the Connect Via drop down may be my ticket.

I know this would be best served by a dumb switch, but I don't have one available.

Thanks in advance.

[Leapfrog]

You can use a wire to connect your bridged router.
However you have to connect the bridged router at one of the LAN-ports and leave the WAN-port unconnected.
Give this router an IP-address in the range you are using, but outside of the DHCP range of the primary router.
Also take care that you only activate DHCP on the primary router and disable it on the bridged router.

[diablo3dfx]

Would I want to leave the TP-Link in bridge mode, or switch it back to gateway mode? If you mean turn off DHCP in gateway mode, I'm hoping it's not too difficult to either disable the firewall completely, or setup my port forwards to go through both routers. Any thoughts?