My wife used a shoebox as a monitor riser.

Her spot for working from home was a corner of our bedroom in a small New York apartment. 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 gave Corner Nook its name.

Where I come from

I sold contract furniture from 2016. That’s 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 contract furniture dealership in New York with clients all over the tri-state area.

Brands build contract chairs 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. We had to close the contract business in 2021. I closed the store in 2022, but kept the website up.

What Corner Nook is now

The site sat unused after that, but people kept finding their way here from Google, mostly to pages about ottomans and air purifiers.

So now Corner Nook helps you pick what to buy for the spots at home you spend your time in, like the sofa, the bed, the breakfast nook and the home office.

What I own, and what I don’t

Some of what I write about lives in our house. My desk is a RightAngle Bonita ET standing desk, in a corner of our den since 2020, and my chair is a Eurotech Elevate I’ve 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, but it never felt like enough for that room, so we 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. The living room rug is a West Elm Kista, and we like it a lot. Next to the dining table, we have a George Oliver fluted buffet from Wayfair.

We sleep on a Saatva Memory Foam Hybrid queen on Saatva’s Adjustable Base, which we got while my wife was pregnant. Since our daughter came along, we’ve added a playpen, a dresser and a diaper caddy.

Where I write about something I own, the page says so, and it shows my own photos when I have them. When a review says it’s by Corner Nook Staff, a tester wrote it about something they use in their own home.

Most of what I cover, I haven’t owned. For those, I read the listing and the specs, and I read what people say after living with it for a while.

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’s who you want on the phone when something arrives damaged.

I read the worst reviews. That’s where you find out what goes wrong, and I tell you before you buy.

The store has today’s price. Prices change within days, so the buttons here read “View” and take you there.

The longer version is on how I check the numbers.

How Corner Nook makes money

Some links here pay me a commission if you buy, and your price stays the same. Pages with paid links say so near the top.

When a brand sends me something to review, that page tells you too. The affiliate disclosure goes into more detail.

Getting in touch

If something here is wrong, I’d rather hear it from you than leave it up. The contact page has the details.