I want to board one interior wall in the garage. It has been insulated. The bottom plate of the framing is pressure treated. I have 3/8 plywood to put up. Can the ply sit on the concrete floor , or should it be up from the floor? I guess plywood can`t be taped and mudded like drywall? So I could just put up strips where the ply joins the studs? It is a very small area, as door and window take up most of the area. Two sheets of 4x8 plywood will do it. Thanks. Patt
If it was me, I'd leave a gap at the bottom, at least 1/2" so you can hose the garage out and not have the walls soaking in water. If your climate is one where it snows and the car tracks in snow another chance to ruin it. If you are going to paint the walls you could fill the cracks and nail holes with paint-able silicone seal.
I'd hold the ply off the concrete half the thickness of the sill plate. The edge of ply tends to suck moisture, and if the concrete was ever damp, you could get delamination. Doesn't your wall sit on a foundation? Garages built on flat slabs are a bad idea, for a lot of reasons. If your wall is right on a flat slab, I'd put down a baseboard of treated 1x6, and then plywood above that. The cheap deck boards would be fine for that.
3/8 is still pretty thin- don't try to use it to hold hooks to hang anything, without hitting a stud behind it. If you want a lot of hooks, put up pegboard on standoffs, or a horizontal 2x6 rail, or something. (assuming part of the reason for skinning this wall was adding storage- if not, never mind...) Don't try to piece it in with little chunks to save 15 bucks on a third sheet of plywood- it'll look like crap. If you lay it out carefully, you will have only a couple of joints visible on the wall, and they will fall on studs, and you won't need any blocking or battens to keep the joints flat. I'd probably leave it bare, but if you are going to paint it, paint or prime the edges of the panels before you put them up, to reduce the water-sucking tendencies of the plywood.
I just noticed you said 'interior wall'. If this is a wall between garage and heated living space, code in most areas requires it to have fire-rated sheetrock or other code-approved fire breaks, no windows, and only fire-rated exterior doors in the wall. Similar requirements apply to the ceiling, unless there is a firewall in the attic space above. If it is a front, back, or end wall, just dividing garage from outside world, plywood is fine.
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