My house is over 100 years old with fairly thick walls, knob and tube wiring, and a lot of neighboring 2.4Ghz access points. I ended up going under the house and running cat6, which was no small feat considering how tight the crawlspace is.
Of course, the cat6 cable I used subsequently got recalled, and so the manufacturer had to pay for a contractor to rerun it. They said that it was the type of job they wouldn't have even quoted for any price originally because it was so gnarly.
I have 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz from two APs on either end of the house. I turned off support for pre-n speeds on the 2.4Ghz to hopefully save some bandwidth on the beacon frames. I have Ethernet over Power to my garage, where I have a third AP for our inlaw unit.
The Ethernet over Power seems to be pretty good, but I had to find the right brand of equipment for it to not be flaky. WiFi still sucks, but my desktop and TV are hardwired, and it's good enough for mobile devices. I can go for about a week without losing my work VPN connection, through wifi through Ethernet over Power to PDSL.