Yes you can flash directly from Dlink stock interface. Once this step is done you have to be careful after that.
I am just testing one last time padavan and I think it's the best and safest. It uses NVRAM instead of UCI which means the whole image is treated as a kernel (and recovers in case of a bad flash). I just tried to delete completely stock image and it was recovered automatically.
I Nand kernel partition is 40mb with another 40mb as a backup. The images hardly reach 20mb. I just used the last part of the main kernel partition as the nvram which means it does not touch the stock partitions and you should be able to go back to stock Dliink with not other partition modified.
One issue I have not been able to sort our is the leds. Padavan defines only 1 led as the power led where our router has 2 different leds (amber when it boots and blue when it's on). Openwrt handles that well but with padavan there was a choice to make - Either have both of them on when it boots or keep the amber only for boot - I chose the latter as you can just turn it off from the web interface.
Now that I explained everything I will upload it and attach the link. once you flash just have the dhcp turned on. The default IP is 192.168.2.1 and admin/admin for username password.
For the wireless bridge there is an option in administration that you can just turn on. It's called access point mode.
Let me know how you go.
K