New Garage Walls

[Tcrate]

Greetings everyone. I am new to the forum but I must say that there is a lot of great information here.

I just built a new garage. It is an addition to my current and is 16' x 42' with 11' walls and a scissor truss ceiling so i can put a car lift in. I have the ceiling drywalled and am getting ready for the walls. As suggestion was made by my neighbor to instead of drywall use OSB or Plywood. Reasoning(and I should mention he did this to his garage) was that it wont easily dent or get holes, easier to hang hooks, hangers, shelves and the like. So with elleven foot walls, I am considering at a minimum putting a 4 foot sheet of drywall all around the top. That leaves me 7 feet to use wood or drywall. At the one end of the garage will be my work shop and I am committed to wood 7' all around on the three walls. now I am considering wood 7' the rest of the way.

I compared prices and although wood is more than drywall the cost of mud, labor to mud, etc comes out to be close if I compare to plywood and cheaper if I use OSB. I do plan on painting it all afterwards.

Has anyone put wood on their garage walls and any thoughts otherwise.

 

[Tcrate]

picture attached.

 

[cbracer]

I did drywall, including all the mudding, taping and texturing. The homax texture is weak after drying and will rip off the wall taking the paint with it, so don't buy homax texture just mix up mud to make texture. Way too much labor doing drywall finishing so hire it out or don't do it at all. There's a bunch of options for wall covering from carpet to wood/osb to frp panels. Explore those options first because the finishing of drywall to only end up with something not too strong isn't worth it in a garage. I just never found a good solution before I started down the dark side... umm I mean drywall....

maybe buy wood wainscoting for the bottom half and paint it gray or something.

 

[70Chevy]

I think if it is attached to the house, it need drywall for fire retardant...I may be mistaken.

 

[Gary S]

My garage walls are covered with OSB inside. I had drywall on a previous garage I owned. After owning both, I'd never use drywall again for all the reasons your neighbor mentioned plus the drywall disintregates when it gets moisture on it.

 

[Falcon67]

I did OSB and I'm glad. It's much more usable in the space than drywall would be. One caution on mixing materials - they will expand/contract at different rates so you might have a bit of trouble maintaining a mudded seam between the two. If I was doing that, I'd use something like a 1x3 trim board around the seam up high.

 

[jhogan2424]

I have been working on finishing out the inside of my shop for the last couple of weeks. I had the same trouble trying to decide what material to use for the interior walls. I finally made the choice to use 5/8" plywood siding with vertical grooves spaced 4 inches apart that is normally used for exterior. I decided on this because it is very durable and is easy to screw things to. We also plumbed the shop with air and moved the compressor outside while we were at it. The only place I used drywall was in the "mancave" that includes a small couch and full bathroom with shower. Please excuse the mess as the shop was scattered around to do this work. It is not quite finished yet but maybe you can get some ideas from these pics. Good luck with your project. Jason

 

[Tcrate]

Jason,
That material looks great and I think it looks better than OSB. I think it is more expensive but looks better. So I think the input here confirms that Wood or something other than Drywall is the way to go. I am going to put wood up 7 feet and leave the rest drywall.

I was planning to put a chair rail type of wood strip over the joint between the wood and the drywall where they meet to hide the joint. What I like about the siding is it also hides the joints. Plywood or OSB creates that issue where you can see the joint.

The only adjacent wall to the house which is about 6' wide is on the right side of the garage. It is already drywalled on the opposite side so i think I am OK with that section.

Lastly, the other idea my neighbor gave me was to cover my compressor with a wood box. On his, He has some holes for air and a drain pipe plumbed from the bottom to drain the water. Then black pipe to various locations. You cannot hear it when it runs. Thougth that was slick. Has anyone used PVC for their air hose or is black pipe better. I am sure black pipe is stronger but more hassle and money to install.

 

[454ragtop]

Don't use PVC pipe for air lines, copper or black iron. I put my compressor outside in a shed/dog house on the side of the shop, can't even hear it (quiet industrial compressor).
HTH, Jim

 

[jhogan2424]

Yes Sir if it were me I would definetly use some type of wood material even if you go with simple OSB. If you were planning on it being a "showroom" type garage to display cars or something similar I may give some more thought to drywall but it seems you are planning on actually using your space for work and some type of wood material would be a much better choice in my opinion. To help you with price comparison... When I was doing my research a couple of weeks ago the cost of 7/16" OSB was $12.00 per sheet at my local home improvement store and the price of the 5/8" siding that I used was $18 per sheet at a building material suprlus store just down the road. It is more expensive but I thought it would be worth it for the cleaner look. No matter which one you choose you are going to use a LOT of paint to cover it. The pictures I posted had 2 coats of paint with a airless pump sprayer and you can still see several thin spots. I am hoping the third coat covers in full. I was also tempted to use PVC for the air lines but as Jim stated above, it is said to be dangerous and there is no doubt that iron or copper would be far more durable.

 

[hockey88fan]

I thought I remembered seeing a prepainted osb? Is there such a product?