Eeeek! I'm so sorry, that sounds HORRIBLE. I had a similar experience with roaches years ago and I'm still traumatized. When my cat woke me up by hunting one ON MY PILLOW I moved out.
DE works great, put some in a line in the doorway, and on the windowsills. Get some caulk and fill in every gap you can find in the baseboards, windowsills, cabinets, etc.
They also have electronic gizmos that repel bugs, if you don't have any small animals (hamsters etc.) it shouldn't bother dog or cats. Something like this:
Bell + Howell Electromagnetic Ultrasonic Pest Repeller
Only the ones I found were cheaper and they had them at Home Depot. Didn't work on roaches (they actually seemed to *like* them, ugh) but might work on spiders.
An exterminator is also a great idea. The place I used to live in would get spiders like crazy (we have black widows here *shudder*), but when they got too bad we had a guy come and spray all around the outside of the house and it killed everything for months.
Good luck. I *hate* spiders too so totally feel your pain.