Bridging network with AP Extreme base station and AP Express

OK, here's the deal. I have an Airport Extreme Base Station on a WPA2 Personal network. Works great except that I want to boost the signal to the rest of the house. So, I bought an Airport Express. Airport Utility picks up both devices; but when I select the new Express to configure it, I get a msg asking to confirm that I want to switch networks. Well, I don't. I want to expand the network I have. Last night I did click "yes" and it was a disaster as I lost the Extreme altogether and the Express couldn't pick up a signal because - obviously - it wasn't connected to the ethernet cable as the base station, and also because (I think) the base station is configured to hide my SSID. I ended up working backwards and got the Extreme back to normal and put the Express back in its box until someone can tell me how to do this. I know Apple says it's easy; but it's a challenge for me. HELP!

A few things:
1. Please don't configure your base station to "hide its SSID". Doing this is absolutely useless as a security method. It will on the other hand complicate setup of your network, as well as the diagnosis of problems when they arise.
2. You must allow the Airport Utility to switch networks during the process. What is happening is that the Airport Utility must temporarily switch your Mac's wireless network connection from your existing base station to the wireless network created by your unconfigured Airport Express in order to communicate with and configure that Airport Express. After the Airport Express configuration is complete - if your Mac doesn't automatically switch your Mac's wireless network connection back again then just do so manually from the MacOS Airport menu.
3. To get a better understanding of what you are doing, start reading at page 42 of Apple's manual "Designing Airport Networks" found at:
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/DesigningAirPort_Networks_Using_AirPortUtility.pdf

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