The house we will be moving into is an old home we will be doing remodeling to one thing at a time but my main problem is with a VERY steep (a little over 6' length) and narrow (31.1/2" wide) stairway that goes to the large open room upstairs, which we plan to make the master bedroom. As I look down these stairs, I can imagine myself doing a tumble at 3am trying to get to the bathroom downstairs. We have done a 3-D model of the house to try and figure a solution on how to make the stairway more "user friendly" but it sits right along side the main bearing wall, and we wanted to bring the stairs out into the room upstairs another 3' and use a landing towards the bottom of the stairs so that they would actually be comming out into the hallway(sort of like a split level). BUT, this would require the landing to go through the main bearing wall. There is no other logical place in the home to put the stairway. So I am wondering if it is safe to go through the main bearing wall? Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated