2 Wifi Routers/Access Points on the same network?

My house is too big to get my router’s wifi signal to reach throughout the entire house. So I took an extra router I had laying around and turned it into a wifi bridge to extend the signal into other areas.

I originally set it up months ago, and it seemed to work fine. However, I just noticed there isn’t a fully seamless transition from the router to the bridge. For instance, if I am connected to the network on a device via the router, then walk with the device to the bridge, it will show I’m still connected to the same network and have full signal, but I can’t access anything on the Network or Internet. In order for me to regain access, I have to disconnect my device from the wifi network, then reconnect.

Is this normal, or do I need to change some setting on the bridge?

p.s. I also noticed if I have device with a manually selected IP address, that device will not have access at all when connected to the bridge. I have to change IP in order to regain access. Don’t know if the 2 issues are related or not.