Owner: Chris Barnes
Location: Pacolet, South Carolina
Shop name: Black Cat Auto and Diesel
Chris Barnes customized his 76” wide, 25” deep Matco setup, from the drawer configuration to its lighting display. Using Matco’s Toolbox Configurator, an online option which lets users build their own toolbox feature-by-feature, Barnes landed on the perfect one.
The complete setup consists of main box, a hutch and a top cabinet. While the main box is technically a three-bay box, it is configured like a two-bay box, meaning Barnes designed the left-side drawers to be long in order to hold more tools.
“If I have a lot of one thing, like pliers, I would have had like three plier drawers [if he kept them standard size]; but with the big drawers I have now I can put them all in one drawer,” Barnes explains.
And this way, Barnes keeps most of his drawers, which are “slammed full” of tools, organized by one single tool category. Everyday items, like wrenches and sockets, are kept in a separate tool cart.
Barnes’ box is about 8’ high including his top cabinet, which holds lesser used tools and needs to be accessed with a step ladder.
“Before I came to the shop I’m at now, I worked in a shop that was overly crowded," Barnes says of his decision to build tall. “I wanted to get a locker, but I didn’t have room in the corner I was in for a side locker. So, at the time I could only go up."
His main hutch is clear of tools and products, and mostly used for display. Or, as Barnes likes to say, “my little show-off area.”
And he didn’t stop his customization efforts with just the box, or it’s uncommon paint job (“root beer brown” with textured, matte black trim). Under his hutch is recessed blue neon lighting, and Barnes outlined the box with additional blue LED strip lights he wired in. The LED lights can change color with a remote control.
Both the hutch and the top cabinet have five power outlets and two built-in USB ports.
Barnes pretty much has his box right where he wants it. He even added a matching mini-fridge decked out with a Matco Tools logo.
“I’ll probably leave it alone as it is because I’ve already got like $20,000 in it,” Barnes laughs. “And just in the box is like $20,000. I’ve got a lot more in tools. I’ll probably stop before my wife kills me.”
