Need to retrain a wisteria vine

[steveviscious89]

Alright, so I've identified this vine next to my deck as a Wisteria. We just moved to this house a few months ago. I was going to cut the whole thing out as you can see it has become more of an obstacle when trying to go up and down the stairs. Then I discovered you can do some pretty cool things with it. There appears to be another one on the other side of the stairs, but it hasn't bloomed so maybe someone can confirm for me that it is indeed another wisteria.

Anyway, my guess is that the previous owners attempted to make an overhead decoration out of it for the stairs, but they gave up. So I'm trying to figure out exactly how much to prune it, and when, and what sort of framework I need to build in order to train it to go over the stairs. Any suggestions?

[Thelma Sanders]

Usual advise, for the UK, is to cut back all this years long whippy growth to about a foot, in August/September. Then have a look and see the general shape..if there's obviously a lump you want rid of...cut it back to a big/ger branch.
Then in February have another chop at the shoots you have already trimmed, cut them to about 2 or 3buds. The fat ones are the flower buds so leave 4 if they are fat.....more flowers
Any new long shoots should also be cut back to about 8 inches.

Repeat each year

[steveviscious89]

That sounds about right. I fear I may have to cut quite a bit out in order for it grow into the framework I eventually put up for it. It appears to be too overgrown to physically move around a lot. I'm still not sure what exactly to construct. I would imagine that normal lattice wouldn't be good because then the flowers won't be able to hang down unless they somehow get into the spaces. I thought something more pergola-like would be better.