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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Bath and across the UK. A good deal of our work involves older buildings where the existing timber is better than anything that would replace it, and the job is to prove that rather than assume it.
We have been specialising in indoor sports and commercial timber floors since 1987. The business is family-run, nothing is subcontracted, and the crew who survey a building are the crew who work on it. Domestic and residential projects fall outside what we do and are looked after by our sister company, Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Committees and estates teams are frequently told a floor needs replacing when it does not. The honest test is measurable: how much board remains above the tongue, whether the fixings and sub-floor are sound, and what the moisture readings show.
Where there is depth left and the structure is stable, restoration wins on cost, disruption and material waste every time. Where it genuinely cannot be saved we say so and show you the readings, rather than either overselling a refurbishment or defaulting to replacement.
Older floors were frequently laid in timber of a quality that would be prohibitively expensive today, and stripping one out to fit a modern equivalent is often a downgrade dressed up as an upgrade.
We sand progressively rather than heavily, match replacement boards by species and grade, and choose a finish suited to both the building and its use. The result keeps the character and the material while making the surface safe and serviceable again.
Older buildings are rarely empty and frequently have neighbours, events and services to work around. Our machinery runs with dust extraction throughout and we plan the noisier stages sensibly, so the rest of the building continues to function.
Programmes are agreed in writing with a fixed handover date, and we phase work where a space genuinely cannot close completely.
Harris Academy wanted a sports floor to match its ambitions, so we fitted a complete Junckers solid-beech sports system, the same Danish flooring specified in elite competition venues, finished with full multi-sport line markings.
An installation like that is a long-term statement: properly maintained, it will outlast every pupil currently on the roll. The project ran to programme from bare sub-floor to handover.
~ Matthew Evans
An outstanding company to deal with and they couldn’t have been better to work with. St George’s Ascot now has a stunning new sports hall floor and we are delighted. From quote, support, delivery and after sales, the Team has been brilliant. Thank you. 
~ James Anderson
Facilities managers are usually asked to obtain three quotations, and comparing them fairly is harder than it looks because contractors describe the same work in very different ways.
The first thing to check is whether each price is for the same scope. A quotation for a full sand and one for a screen and recoat are not comparable, and the cheaper is not necessarily worse: it may simply be the right answer. Ask each contractor which they are pricing and why.
The second is what happens to repairs. A price that excludes board replacement will rise once the old finish comes off and the damage becomes visible. A price that includes a stated allowance will not.
The third is the finish itself. Two pack polyurethane and single pack lacquer are not the same product and will not last the same time, so ask what is being applied and how many coats.
The fourth is markings. Setting out from measured governing body dimensions costs more than tracing the existing lines, and produces a correct court rather than perpetuating an old error.
Markings are the part of a floor everybody looks at, and the part most often got wrong.
We set out from current governing body dimensions using laser and tape, not by copying what is already on the floor. Courts that have been remarked by tracing the previous set drift over the years, and a surprising number of halls turn out to have netball thirds that are not equal or three point arcs that are not true.
On timber the lines go down between coats of seal so the paint finishes under the final lacquer. That single detail is why our markings last as long as the finish, while lines applied on top of a completed floor start lifting within a season.
We will also ask what is actually played. Most halls carry markings for at least one sport nobody has taught in years, and removing redundant sets does more for clarity than any amount of clever colour choice. Fewer lines, correctly dimensioned, in colours that separate properly under your own lighting.
A great deal of what we do happens when the building is empty, because for most facilities that is the only way the work can happen at all.
Leisure centres in particular rarely have a fortnight to give up. Booking income stops, members notice, and some of them do not come back. So we work overnight, sealing at the end of a shift so the floor is walkable by opening time, with heavy equipment going back once the finish has hardened properly.
Weekend working suits buildings that are busy on weekdays: offices with sports facilities, universities in term, and community halls with a weekday programme. Bank holiday weekends are particularly useful because they give an extra day of cure time.
Out of hours working costs a little more in labour and it saves considerably more in lost income and disruption. We will quote both ways so you can weigh one against the other rather than being told what your only option is.
Key holding, alarm codes and access arrangements are agreed in writing before we start.
Facilities managers are usually working to a figure set before anybody looked at the floor, so it helps to know what moves it.
Area is the obvious factor, and bigger halls are cheaper per square metre because mobilisation is spread further. A four court hall almost always works out better value per metre than a single studio.
Condition matters more than size. A screen and recoat is a fraction of the cost of a full sand. Board repairs, replacing damaged sections and dealing with a failed subfloor all add, and they are the items that appear once the old lacquer comes off.
Markings are priced by what you need rather than what is there. Removing three redundant sets makes the hall clearer and the job cheaper.
Access and hours are the last variable. A hall we can work in continuously through a holiday costs less than the same hall done overnight around evening bookings. We quote both where it helps you weigh disruption against money.
Bath and the surrounding area gives us a particular mix of work, weighted towards independent schools, university facilities and older community buildings.
Independent school sports halls and gymnasia are a significant part of it. These are usually well maintained buildings where the expectation of finish quality is high, and where the hall is in use for curriculum sport, club training and lettings across a long day. The work almost always happens in holidays, and the dates are fixed a long way ahead.
University sport is the second strand, with the same year round pressure on the timetable that every campus has, and the same narrow windows.
The third is the older stock: church halls, village halls and school assembly halls with timber floors that are often eighty or a hundred years old. Those floors are frequently in far better condition than people assume, and restoring rather than replacing them is usually both cheaper and better.
Across all three the common theme is that a proper survey changes the recommendation. We have talked more than one client out of a replacement they had already budgeted for.
The enquiries that reach us from Bath tend to fall into a few recognisable categories, and it is often useful to see whether yours is among them.
The most frequent is an independent school hall where the finish has become patchy rather than uniformly worn, usually because the traffic lanes have gone through while the corners are untouched. That pattern responds well to a full sand rather than a recoat, because a recoat over an uneven base stays uneven.
The second is old timber in listed and period buildings, of which the city has a great many. Those floors need a light touch and a realistic conversation about what will and will not come out, because a century of use leaves marks that no machine removes entirely.
The third is halls that have been polished for decades. That build up has to come off chemically before sanding, or it clogs every abrasive we put on the floor, and it is the most common reason a quotation from elsewhere turns out to have missed something.
We survey free of charge and tell you which of these you have before anything is committed.
Colour is the part of a relining scheme most often decided badly, because it gets chosen from a chart in an office rather than on the floor under the hall lights.
Most halls have been refitted with LED lighting in the last decade, and LEDs render colour very differently from the fluorescent tubes they replaced. Two shades that look clearly distinct on a sample card can merge almost completely under the actual lighting, which is how halls end up with court markings nobody can follow.
So we bring samples and look at them in the room with the lights on before anything is ordered. It takes ten minutes and it prevents the most common complaint we hear about other contractors work.
The floor itself matters too. A pale maple floor takes different colours from a mid tone vinyl or a dark polyurethane, and a scheme designed for one will not necessarily read on the other. Where a hall is being recoloured as well as relined, the two decisions have to be made together rather than in sequence.
It depends on what the floor actually needs. A deep clean is the least expensive intervention, a recoat sits in the middle, a full sand and seal above that, and replacement is the rare last resort. We survey free of charge and price every realistic option so you can choose on evidence.
All of it, plus the surrounding region. Everything is surveyed, agreed and priced before we set off, so there are no additional travel charges appearing partway through a project.
We stop, tell you, and price the options before proceeding. Nothing gets sealed over and no additional work happens without your agreement in writing.
We recommend products suited to your floor and local water, and run a cleaning demonstration for your own team. Most of the work between our visits is theirs, so getting the routine right matters.
The European standard for indoor sports surfaces. It sets out how shock absorption, vertical deformation, ball bounce and friction are measured, and what an indoor sports floor should achieve.
Yes. We survey, take moisture readings, measure the remaining board depth and look at the structure, then quote a fixed sum broken down by element. There is no charge and no obligation.
Yes. We survey the slab for level and moisture first, install mitigation where readings require it, and specify the system to the actual timetable of the hall rather than to a standard answer.
A light abrasion of the existing finish followed by a fresh top coat. It restores grip and appearance at a fraction of the cost of a full sand, and it works whenever the seal is worn but still intact.
A failed pad, cracked batten or tired cradle beneath the boards. It is a structural problem, and sanding the surface will not change how the floor feels. We lift the boards locally and replace the failed components.
Yes. We deep clean, reseal, remark and fully recoat synthetic sports surfaces, and a PU floor recoated in a fresh colour with new markings looks like a new installation for a fraction of the cost.
Usually because the expansion gaps at the perimeter have closed or been blocked, or because moisture is coming up through the slab. Both need diagnosing before refinishing, or the cause simply repeats.
Book a free survey of your floor in Bath and we will tell you honestly what it needs, what it will cost and how quickly it can happen. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.