Room by Room Hardwood · Cornwall ON

Refinishing · Staircases · Installation · Repairs

The floor is already in there.

Room by Room takes worn, scratched and dated hardwood back to bare wood and brings it up in the tone you actually picked — sampled on your own floor before a drop of finish goes down. Cornwall and Eastern Ontario, run by John.

A wide hickory hardwood floor in a log home, freshly refinished to a deep gloss, with Bona finish boxes stacked at the edge of the room.
Mixed hickory — sanded bare, finished in Bona
100% recommend · 10 reviews Free written estimates Dust-contained sanding Premium Bona finishes Owner on every job

01 · What makes us different

See the stain on your floor before we commit to it.

Stain looks nothing on a paper card like it does on your wood. Species, age, grain, how much old finish soaked in — all of it moves the colour. So before anything permanent happens, John lays a sample panel down on your sanded floor, in your light, and you stand over it and pick.

A sample panel of four different stain tones laid out in geometric blocks on a freshly sanded raw red oak floor.
Bare red oak
The reference. Freshly sanded, nothing on it. Every tone on this panel gets judged against the raw wood right beside it — which is the only honest way to look at stain.

The panel above, tone by tone

  • Bare red oakno stain
  • Warm mid-browngolden
  • Deep walnut brownrich
  • Near-black espressograin forward
  • Weathered greycool cast
“That orange isn’t the oak — it’s the old finish.” John · Room by Room

Most floors people want to rip out aren’t orange oak — they’re decent oak under thirty years of ambered finish. Sanding it off is usually the whole job.

Get a sample done on your floor

02 · What we do

Four things, done properly.

Solid hardwood and engineered floors, plus the staircases nobody else wants to touch. Residential across Cornwall, SD&G and Eastern Ontario.

03 · How a job runs

Six steps, start to walk-through.

A typical single-storey refinish runs three to five days on site, most of which is waiting on coats to dry rather than machines running.

  1. STEP 01

    Estimate

    John walks the floors, checks species, wear layer and any damage, and gives you a written price. No charge, no obligation.

    Free · usually same week
  2. STEP 02

    Prep & containment

    Furniture out, base shoe off where it needs to come off, doorways sealed in plastic and vents covered so the rest of the house stays out of it.

    Poly barriers · vents sealed
  3. STEP 03

    Sanding

    Coarse to fine through the grit sequence with a dust-containment system on the machines — the vast majority of the dust never reaches the air.

    36 → 60 → 80 grit, edged and screened to match
  4. STEP 04

    Stain sample

    Sample tones go down on your bare floor. You look at them in your own daylight and pick one. Nothing permanent happens until you do.

    On your floor, not a card
  5. STEP 05

    Finish coats

    Stain, then two to three coats of premium Bona — waterborne for low odour and fast return, or oil-based where you want that warmer amber.

    Bona waterborne or oil-modified
  6. STEP 06

    Cure & walk-through

    We walk the floor together in daylight before anything moves back in, and you get the care rules for the first week in writing.

    Light traffic ~24h · furniture ~48h · rugs ~7 days
A large lakeside room with cedar walls and a stone fireplace, its intricate hexagonal parquet floor freshly refinished and reflecting light from a wall of windows.

04 · Floors other people write off

Parquet, weave-ins, and hundred-year-old oak.

This lakeside room is hexagonal parquet — hundreds of small blocks running in every direction at once, which is exactly the kind of floor that gets carpeted over instead of saved. Sanded flat, brought back, and it will outlive whatever would have replaced it.

  • Based inCornwall, Ontario
  • ServingSD&G & Eastern Ontario
  • DustContained at the machine
  • EstimatesFree & in writing

05 · Reviews

Ten for ten, and the neighbours talk.

Most of our work comes from somebody standing on a floor we did and asking who did it. Read the Google reviews, or leave one if we’ve worked for you.

“Our home has original hardwood floors that are 55 years old… Room by Room made the entire process incredibly easy from start to finish, and the results are amazing.”
SRSarah Ashley Roesler2025Facebook
“Room by Room came in and refinished the hardwood floors of both of my old houses. They did a beautiful job which has lasted twelve years now.”
JTJim Thompson2018Facebook
“Superior craftsmanship, customer service & affordable. If you’re thinking about having your hardwood floors redone (or replaced) these are the guys to call.”
RKRick Kelly2019Facebook
“Not only is he good at his craft, he follows timelines and walks homeowners through the process.”
NMNicholas MacNaughty2025Facebook

06 · Book an estimate

Tell us about the floor.

Fill this in and John gets back to you — usually the same day. Estimates are free, in writing, and there’s no pressure at the end of one. Five boxes, most of them optional — the rest we sort out on the phone.

Or email the same details to rxrfloors@gmail.com — we never share your information.