Need Re-potting/dividing help!

Hi! I'm new here and I need some help with a houseplant that I'm pretty attached to (is it weird to be attached to your plants? lol I hope not!) anyway, about 2 years ago I moved into my 1st house and my friend gave me a plant from her home. So, it really has sentimental value to me.

Well, it's still in the same pot it was 2 years ago (mistake #1), and at this point the bottom looks all but dead, and the top keeps growing upward! I'm hoping someone can tell me if/how this plant could be cut from the top and replanted to start a new plant? Right now there's really no more room for it to grow and it's just started to look bad (I've attached pictures of the bottom bare part, the top where it continues to grow reaching my ceiling! And also a picture of the entire plant). I'm a houseplant novice so I thought I would start here to see if anyone had some tips on how I could go about saving this plant, to be honest I'm not even really sure what type of plant it is. I'd appreciate any suggestions, thanks so much in advance!

It's a schefflera. You probably already know the plant isn't doing well. Fortunately, the plant is genetically very vigorous and will tolerate a lot of adversity that plants with less genetic vigor wouldn't; so vigor is its strong suit, but vitality is where it's weak. The first order of business should be to restore the plant to good vitality so you can take advantage of its natural vigor. You probably think I'm talking in circles, but vigor is a genetic thing. Vitality is a cultural thing and is a measure of how the plant deals with the hand it's dealt - with the cultural conditions under which it's growing. There are obviously things that have gone beyond stress to strain, that if not corrected will lead to the death of the plant.

So far, there's not enough information to determine exactly what might be wrong. If we play the odds, the bet is the plant is root bound, has been over or under-watered, probably has a high level of salts in the soil, and isn't getting enough light (I'm sure of this). If you want to, we can put a plan in place that will take place over the next several months that should have your plant markedly improved and on the way to recovery by summer's end. I'll tell you how to work with the plant's natural energy cycle instead of against it. While you decide whether or not you want to work on that, you might read through the longish thread I'm going to link you to. It's on this forum's face page now, just below your thread.

I'll sort of wait to see how determined you are before I go through it. Most of what I would be suggesting is in the thread I linked you to below.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/843962/

Some of my scheffleras - just in case you're wondering if I'm talking from experience or just like to talk. ;-)

Al

Hey Al! I just got finished reading your linked post (sorry it took me so long to reply, I thought the webiste would email me if there was a reply to my post?)

Anyway - so about 2/3 of the way through your linked post you show where you cut off thet of a root bound plan to repot it. Would this be step #1 with my poor tree?

or perhaps to wait until I can reliably take it outside with temps above 55 at night?