About Nook & Things

The kids go down around 7:30pm. For a long stretch, what happened next was that my husband, Max and I sat on the same couch on two different phones until it was late enough to go to bed.

Neither of us decided to do that. It's just what fills the gap when you're tired and the evening is the only part of the day nobody is asking you for anything.

We wanted something else in that slot. It had to be off a screen, obviously. It had to be interesting enough that we'd stay with it, because I'm over the easy crafts by the second night. And I wanted something left at the end to show for it, not something that gets disassembled. 

A book nook is the first thing we found that does all of it and then sits on the shelf afterward with the light on.

We love them and wanted to share them with other aspiring builders.

The short version

Nook & Things sells DIY book nook kits, the miniature lit rooms that slot into a bookshelf between real books. Six of them, $59 each or any two for $89, and every kit ships free in the US. We're Katie and Max, we run the company between the two of us out of Scottsdale, Arizona under Katies Threads LLC, and kits ship from a fulfillment center in Michigan. If you have never seen one of these, here is what a book nook actually is.

Why a book nook and not something else

A book nook takes a few evenings, and the pieces are small enough that you cannot build one while half-watching something. That sounds like a drawback. It is the entire reason it works. It's the only thing we've found that reliably keeps us off our phones for two hours without anybody having to be disciplined about it.

Then you're done, and it's on the shelf with the light on, and it stays there. People notice it and ask what it is, which is not something anyone has ever done about a jigsaw we finished.

Who runs Nook & Things?

Two of us, and that is not a modest way of saying there's a small team.

Max is the builder. He has assembled every piece of furniture in this house, and he has never once left something half done. He'll get to the step where the instructions stop making sense, go very quiet, and finish it anyway. I'm the opposite. I can manage the easy builds and then I'm out, which turns out to be useful, because I'm the one who notices when a kit is about to lose somebody.

I pick the kits, write the listings, and answer the email. When you write to hello@nookandthings.com, it's me, usually within a day.

What if a piece is missing or broken?

Tell us and we send a replacement, free, and we're not going to ask you for photographs of the damage or your receipt. Unopened kits can go back within 30 days. Shipping is free on US orders over $50, so every kit ships free. The full policy is here, and it's short.

The whole point of one of these is the evening you spend on it. Losing that evening to a missing piece is the one thing we actually care about preventing.

Where to start

If you want the easiest first build, it's the Magic Coffee House, which is the smallest of the six. If you want the one people stop and look at, it's the sushi house. All six are here.