Really nice tutorial, and great experiment, however, at home, I would prefer to stay within a much narrower power budget like 5-10 watts max for the router. This one seems in the 40watts-60watts.
A step further would be a laptop that can come by with 5-10W and still run circles around typical arm-based off the shelf routers. thou the second nic will probably connect via usb3, you get a real keyboard and screen for troubleshooting.