As most of you already know, last summer when we had our house up for sale, we discovered a fairly major mold problem in the basement, which necessitated completely gutting and rebuilding the basement.  Not a fun prospect but we didn't have a choice. Everything in our basement got piled into the garage. My nephews did the majority of the gutting, and everything but the inside walls of the bathroom was torn out.   In the process, we also decided to open up the stairwell so it didn't feel quite so much like going down into a dungeon, so the stairwell wall came out as well. Once that was done, the walls had to be pressure washed and the floors had to be etched ...