[simporis]

I've done it!
here's what i was doing wrong.
I had to disconnect from the wifi network i usually use, then click 'connect to a network'. i found an unsecured network called 'dd-wrt'.
I connected to this network and changed the IP to 192.168.2.1, the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0, the default gateway to 192.168.1.1 and the DNS to 192.168.1.1
I could then log in to the router home page on 192.168.1.1! hoorah! now I have to just figure out how to set it up as a repeater bridge :/
so im sure i'll be screwing around with this for another 6 hours! (just think, if i'd have just worked for this amount of time i could have bought 2 bloody bridges by now! sometimes I amaze myself with my false economic stupidity!)

Sorry to the people that tried to help me. But it was never clear that I had to connect to ddwrt wifi network instead of my existing wifi network.Another lesson in the facinating, time consuming an often irritating world of IT! thank you for writing this guide though. If you have a link to a good tutorial on how to now set this ddwrt router up as a repeater bridge that would be greatly appreciated