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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Belfast and across the UK. Projects here are planned as complete programmes, fully surveyed, agreed and priced before we travel.
We are specialists rather than generalists, which after nearly forty years means a depth of knowledge on sports and commercial timber floors that a general contractor cannot match. Every stage is completed in-house. We do not quote for domestic work; Ryan’s Restorations handles that side.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Work involving a sea crossing is a planning exercise. Machinery, materials and crew travel together, contingency stock is included, and the programme is organised as a continuous block rather than a series of visits.
Travel and mobilisation are stated openly in the quotation rather than added afterwards, and the work is completed in one window so nothing waits on a return trip.
Because a second visit is expensive, everything happens together: survey findings acted upon, repairs completed, sanding, sealing, marking and any testing, with the handover date agreed before we set off.
It concentrates disruption into one period rather than spreading it across months, which most facilities prefer regardless of the logistics.
We would rather have an honest conversation early than travel to a project that was never a good fit. Some work is better served by a contractor already established locally, and we will say so.
Where the work suits our specialism, timber restoration, sports hall refurbishment, court marking and specialist coatings, distance is a logistics question we have answered for nearly four decades.
The sports hall floor at De Wint School had reached the end of its seal: grey through the middle, markings closer to guesswork than instruction, and a surface that felt slippery however often it was cleaned.
We sanded it back to clean timber, repaired what needed repairing, resealed and re-marked. The hall reopened with a deep, glossy finish that reads as newly installed, delivered inside a planned holiday window.
~ 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
A new finish is only as good as the regime that follows it, and the fastest way to waste the money is to put the wrong mop on it in week one.
The guidance we hand over is deliberately short. Dust mop daily with a treated cloth to lift grit before it acts as an abrasive underfoot. Damp mop with a neutral cleaner made for sealed sports timber. Deal with spills quickly. Keep a decent mat run at the entrances, because most of the grit that wears a floor walks in on trainers.
What to avoid is equally short. No polish, no wax, nothing that promises shine. These build up, reduce slip resistance and eventually have to be stripped chemically at real cost. They are the most common cause of the slippery floors we are called out to.
Scrubber driers are fine if they are set up correctly and the water is picked up rather than left standing. We are happy to look at your machine settings while we are on site.
The question we are asked most is when the floor can be used again, and the honest answer is that it depends on the system, which is why we put it in writing rather than giving a rule of thumb.
As a general guide, light foot traffic is possible around twenty four hours after the final coat. Full use, with equipment wheeled back and posts refitted, is usually seventy two hours. Some systems are faster and some are slower, and cold or humid conditions extend both.
Walking on a floor too early is the single most common cause of a job needing touching up, and it is entirely avoidable. Footprints in a curing seal do not polish out. Nor do the marks left by equipment put back a day early.
So we agree access arrangements before we start, we sign the room, and where necessary we arrange for it to be locked. It is not us being difficult. It is the difference between a floor that hands over properly and one that needs us back.
The question we are asked most often, and the answer comes down to three measurements rather than an opinion.
The first is the remaining wear layer. Every full sand takes timber off, and a floor that has been through many cycles may be close to its fixings. Once a sander reaches the tongue the board is finished, and nothing changes that.
The second is the structure. Isolated failed pads and battens are routine repairs. A system that has failed widely, or one that never suited the hall, is a different proposition.
The third is moisture. A slab with an active problem will destroy any floor laid on it, new or refurbished, until the cause is dealt with.
If the wear layer is adequate, the structure is largely sound and the slab is dry, refurbishment is almost always better value and will give many more years. Where those things are not true we say so plainly, because a refurbishment on a failing floor is money spent twice.
Every quotation follows a site visit, because a sports floor holds information you cannot get from a photograph and a price given without it is a price that will change.
We take moisture readings in the boards and, where there is any reason for doubt, in the slab beneath. Moisture from below is the single most common cause of a new finish failing early, and it is far cheaper to find before the work than afterwards.
We measure the remaining wear layer. Every full sand removes timber, and a floor that has been through several cycles may be close to its fixings. Knowing where you stand tells you whether this is a floor to refinish now or a floor to plan on replacing in a few years.
We lift a vent or an edge trim and look underneath. Dead spots, squeaks and movement almost always start below the boards, and no amount of work on the surface will touch them.
Then we record the finish, the markings and the condition of the perimeter. The survey takes about an hour and it decides everything that follows.
Work in Belfast comes to us mainly from schools, university sport and the leisure estate, and the practical difference from a mainland job is the planning rather than the work itself.
Because a crossing is involved, we programme these projects as continuous blocks rather than a series of short visits. Machinery, abrasives and coatings all travel with the team, and we carry more spare than we would on a job an hour from base, because a missing item cannot be collected in the afternoon. In practice that makes the job tighter rather than looser, since everything has to be thought through in advance.
School sports halls make up the largest share, and the constraint is the same everywhere: the hall must be back for the first day of term. University and further education facilities follow, with the narrow year round windows that campus sport always has.
Leisure centres are the third group, and there the priority is keeping the building trading, which usually means overnight working.
If you have more than one floor, or you know of another facility considering work, it is worth mentioning it. Sequencing two or three projects into one trip brings the cost down for all of them.
The enquiries we get from Belfast tend to cluster around a few recurring problems, and knowing which one you have shapes the answer considerably.
Worn traffic lanes are the most common. The lacquer has gone through where players actually run, dirt is now sitting in open timber, and mopping spreads it rather than lifting it. Caught early that is a straightforward refinish. Left too long, the staining goes deep enough that sanding will not fully remove it.
The second is dead spots and movement, which point to the structure rather than the surface. A failed pad or cracked batten needs the boards lifting locally, and no amount of sanding will change how that part of the floor feels.
The third is halls where somebody has applied coat after coat over the years without ever taking the floor back. Those build ups eventually go cloudy and peel in sheets, and the only real answer is to strip it properly and start again.
We will tell you which of these you are dealing with at survey.
Almost every hall we survey carries markings for at least one sport nobody has played in years, and a good many carry three or four.
Short tennis lines from a scheme that ended a decade ago. Five a side markings for a layout the school no longer uses. A junior court for a year group that is no longer taught. Every one of them adds visual noise and makes the sports you do play harder to read, particularly for a referee.
So relining starts with a conversation about what is actually used rather than what is currently painted. Taking two redundant sets off does more for clarity than any amount of clever colour selection, and it makes the job cheaper rather than dearer because there is less to put back.
On timber the reliable way to remove old line marking is to sand the floor, which takes it off completely. Where a full sand is not warranted we can often over seal instead. Either way, halls look considerably larger and considerably smarter once the clutter has gone.
The honest answer is that we cannot know until we have measured. What we can say is that we price the least expensive effective option as well as the full one, so the decision is yours rather than ours, and that the figure we give you is the figure you pay.
We do, and the wider region with it. Work further from our base is organised as a single concentrated programme so nothing is left unfinished awaiting a return trip, and travel is included in the quoted price.
Yes, including cradle, sports batten, pad and board and duo batten systems, specified against the sports being played and the build height available.
Usually within a couple of weeks, and sooner where a floor has become a safety concern. The survey is free and takes under an hour for most halls.
Yes, where replacement is genuinely necessary. Strip-out, disposal and sub-floor preparation are all included in the quotation rather than added later.
Yes, and it is a genuine specialism. Granwood is a composite block in a bitumen bed, not timber, and it needs appropriate preparation and a modified epoxy coating system rather than standard sanding and lacquering.
Yes. Logos are painted from your own artwork between coats of seal so they wear with the floor rather than scuffing off. It costs least while the floor is already open for a refinish.
No. We are a commercial contractor working on schools, leisure centres, universities, clubs and public buildings. The machinery, finishes and insurance are different from domestic work.
Yes, and for organisations with several floors it is where we usually start. You get a written report per site with photographs, moisture readings, remaining wear layer and a costed priority order.
Yes. We work as the specialist flooring element within refurbishment schemes and are used to main contractor site rules, inductions, permits and progress reporting.
Heating dries the air, the boards give up moisture and shrink. It is normal seasonal movement rather than a fault, and it closes again in summer. Keeping the building humidity more stable reduces it.
Book a free survey of your floor in Belfast 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.