no need to recompile the kernel if you can live with NFSv2 (which I don't see why not for a home network). Since there is no lockd running, you'll have to mount as follows (which works for me):
chumby-29-53-95:~ # mount -t nfs -o nolock -o vers=2 192.168.0.10:/data /mnt/nfs
(make sure to mkdir /mnt/nfs first).
Compiling a kernel isn't difficult either, as if you were to type "gcc" for the first time, it'll download the toolchain for you. What it means is that it will download and install gcc, make, and other build tools for you into /mnt/storage. The guys even made sure to have /mnt/storage/bin in PATH and /mnt/storage/lib in LD_LIBRARY_PATH so stuff just works. I just compiled rsync and it built cleanly without any issues. I did build the kernel once, but forgot the step where I had to write the kernel image to the first partition on krnA and krnB using config_util.
Didn't recompile since I figured NFSv2 support will do for now for me.