Yup, establishing encrypted partition for /home was easy as a pie using cryptsetup. I was considering using truecrypt as it offers multiplatform support, so I could access encrypted partition even from my dualbooted windoze, but I didn't want to put effort into something not as well documented (how-toed) as dmcrypt. As for initrd, I believe it has a lot of advantages, but as long as I can avoid it, I don't see any reason why to spend time learning that stuff and making my kernel deployment more complicated. I know that one day I will have to learn that stuff. But as far as it is not today, it makes my day even better :)
Thanks for all your responses! Peter