Hi Paul,

When I had Comcast cable it was easy for me to find the main cable line in the basement, find a junction and put in a splitter that allowed me to feed cable to other rooms.  For instance I ran a line up to the second floor through the cold air return for a TV and another one into my office where I had my computer.

From my experience, cable is much easier to work with than AT&T's Uverse which is based on phone lines.  Just split the incoming cable and run it wherever you want it.  That way your friend could run another cable line off the main one at the splitter and put the cable in whatever room you want with the printer and the Airport base station.   I did that for my MacBook Pro and an HP Laserjet Printer when I owned my own home.  Worked like a charm.

The tools and extra cable are available at Radio Shack, Best Buy and even Wallmart or Meijers.  Just buy a really good splitter because a cheap one can screw up  your signal (I speak from experience).  

Hope this helps,

Foster