I have already gathered a lot of good ideas from this forum, it's amazing how many questions align with my situation. Our house (north of Boston) got water up from the ground in the basement during the crazy spring rains. Supposedly (according to neighbors) it was the first time the house got water. We bought the house 13 months ago and the home inspector had shown us a good way to determine if there had been a water issue -- look at the underside of the stairs, and see if there is a water stain. We have a little storage nook accessed by a door for storage under the stairs. Sure enough, shining a flashlight at the base of the stairs showed no water stains. I guess the theory is that it is a hard place to reach so if there had been water it would have lingered there a bit and it would be tell-tale. Anyway, the basement had been finished, with nice real-wood paneling and a half wall to divide the space. (It's not a huge basement but it did help to define the space a little). My husband ripped out all of the paneling that got wet. A couple segments of wall still have paneling because the walls that have baseboard heat were just high enough off the ground that the water didn't reach them. However, for the sake of continuity, we'll have to finish removing the panels. We're trying to decide how to re-finish the walls. My husband thought of (after re-studding the framing and cleaning and maybe even waterproof painting the walls) putting up vinyl beadboard. That way the bottom of the walls will be protected (as opposed to sheet rock). He'd then put up some trim molding across the top of the bead board and then sheet rock for the top half, which we would paint. I'm not sure that I'm crazy about this idea. The ceilings aren't high, so I wonder if the bead board will cause the room to seem shorter? Also, I just don't know enough to be sure that it's a good method. I have been doing some research and I found a product and/or company called Zen Wall. I did a search to see if it was mentioned within this forum and nothing came up. (I tried it as two words and as one word.) It seems like it may be a good solution for us. I've been googling them but so far my searches haven't yielded any personal reviews or customer pictures. I'll keep looking but figured I would check in here to see if there's any info. Any experience with them or feedback would be appreciated. Thank you for all of the previous information that I've read and any future advice!

Here is a link that might be useful: zen wall system