check in your closets for an access door. one of the houses that I owned in the past had the crawlspace access in the floor of the closet in one of the bedrooms.

JMHO

Carl

absolutely! it is just stuff, like any other construction if it goes up it can come down.

your main concern will be support. typically, above any weight bearing wall is a 'header'. an extra wide, tall, long piece of material that allows the opening to exist without falling.

if you expand the opening you must expand that header support. this can be done temporaily or permanently. considering your situation a steel "I" beam of sufficient length would span long enough on both side to erect structural supports underneath. once built there is little reason to remove it. now you have a permanent larger ingress/egress to your crawl.

check around. steel beams and concrete blocks are more reasonably priced than you may think.

That's exactly what we ended up doing. I found an I-beam at a salvage yard and put it in the header space them had a guy come and cut a bigger hole. That was over a year ago. So far the house hasn't come tumbling down.

GOOD on YA'- for taking charge of an intimidating situation and converting it into just another hurdle overcome.