My wife used a shoebox as a monitor riser.

This was the corner of our bedroom in a small New York apartment, and that was her spot whenever she had to work from home. When her back got bad enough that she wanted to stand, she would carry the laptop over to the top of a four-drawer shelf and work from there. I watched that go on for months before it landed that I sold furniture for a living and could probably fix it.

That corner is where the name came from.

Where I come from

I sold contract furniture from 2016. That is the commercial side of the trade, the chairs and desks that go into hospitals, schools, nonprofits and offices. My mother and I ran the business together, a company called A&H Co in Long Island City. It was certified as minority-owned and woman-owned, and our clients were all over the tri-state area.

Contract chairs are made for strangers to sit in eight hours a day, for years. Selling them teaches you what holds up. You see what comes back damaged, and you hear what people complain about six months in.

In May 2020 we opened Corner Nook, an online store, to bring that kind of furniture to people setting up to work at home, people like my wife in that bedroom corner. The contract business closed in 2021. In 2026 I closed the store as well.

What Corner Nook is now

Even after that, people kept finding their way here from Google, mostly to pages about ottomans and air purifiers. So now Corner Nook helps you pick furniture for the spots at home you spend your time in. The desk in the corner, the breakfast nook, the reading chair and the living room sofa.

What I own, and what I don’t

Some of what I write about lives in our house. My desk is a RightAngle Bonita standing desk, in a corner of our den since 2020, and my chair is a Eurotech Elevate I have sat in nearly every day since then.

We also have a Eurotech iOO mesh chair and a Levoit Core 300-P air purifier. We bought the Levoit in 2021 for our bedroom, found it was too small for the room, and moved it to the home office. Our sofa is a Crate & Barrel we got secondhand from a relative, and I really like how you sink into it after a long day. Since our daughter came along, there is a playpen, a dresser and a diaper caddy too.

Where I write about something I own, the page says so, and it shows my own photos when I have them. Most of what I cover, I have not owned. For those, I read the listing and the specs, and I read what people say after living with it for a while, the unhappy ones most of all.

How I pick

I send you to a seller worth dealing with. I link the brand or a big retailer before a marketplace reseller. That is who you want on the phone when something arrives damaged.

I skip anything under 3.9 stars, or with fewer than 50 reviews. A great rating from a handful of buyers does not tell you much yet.

I read the one and two star reviews. That is where you find out what goes wrong, and I tell you before you buy.

Prices are rounded. They change within days, so I show an approximate price, and the shop has today’s.

The longer version is on how I check the numbers.

How Corner Nook makes money

I hold no inventory, ship nothing and take no payments. Some links here do pay me a commission if you buy, and your price stays the same. Pages with paid links say so near the top. The affiliate disclosure names which programs pay.

Getting in touch

Corrections are welcome, particularly on specifications. If something here is wrong, I would rather hear it from you than leave it up. The contact page has the details.