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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Buckinghamshire and across the UK. Much of our work is for schools and academy trusts planning capital work across several financial years.
A family business established in 1987, working exclusively on commercial indoor sports and timber floors. We survey, install, restore, mark, test and maintain, keeping every stage in our own hands so one warranty covers the whole system. Domestic work is handled separately by Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Few organisations can address every floor at once, and the useful question is which work genuinely cannot wait. That is a technical judgement rather than a financial one, and it should be made with evidence.
Our survey reports rank findings by urgency with firm costs attached, so work can be phased across financial years deliberately. We will say plainly what is deteriorating and what is merely unattractive, because those are very different priorities.
Three factors move a flooring quotation more than anything else: the condition of the sub-floor, how much preparation the existing surface requires, and how tightly the programme is compressed.
The first two are established at survey. The third is within your control, and it is where money is most often wasted: an urgent job squeezed into a fortnight costs materially more than the same work with a sensible window. We will always tell you where patience saves money.
Flooring quotations are notoriously difficult to compare because they frequently describe different scopes. One includes sub-floor preparation and another assumes it; one specifies three coats and another two; one includes markings and another treats them as an extra.
Our quotations itemise scope, specification, coat numbers, marking and testing explicitly so you can compare like with like. If a competing quote is markedly cheaper, that itemisation usually explains why.
At Medina Leisure Centre we refurbished the main sports hall floor completely: sanding, repairs, resealing and a full set of new markings, with the logistics planned down to the last detail so the centre lost as little bookable time as possible.
The after photographs show a hall transformed, and the programme finished on the date agreed at the outset.
~ 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
The complaint we hear most about other contractors is the variation that appears once the old finish comes off, so we price to avoid it.
Our quotations are broken down by element rather than given as a single figure. Preparation, sanding, board repairs, sealing, line marking and testing are each priced separately. If the budget will not stretch this year you can see exactly which part to defer rather than losing the whole scheme.
Because we survey properly, we know what is likely to appear once the floor is bare, and we allow for it in the quotation as expected work rather than presenting it later as an extra. The only things we would ever come back to you about are genuinely unforeseeable, and in twenty years that has been rare.
We also quote alternatives where they exist. If a screen and recoat will do what you need instead of a full sand, we will price both and tell you which we would choose. We would rather quote the cheaper option and see you again in five years.
Granwood is a composite block of wood flour and cement, laid in a bitumen bed, installed in thousands of British schools and halls from the nineteen thirties onwards. A great many are still down and still serviceable, which says a good deal about how well they were made.
It is not timber and it must not be treated as timber. There is no grain and no wear layer in the usual sense, and aggressive sanding takes block that cannot be put back. Bitumen softens with heat, so a machine held too long in one place draws adhesive up through the joints. Some older bitumen beds contain asbestos, and we treat every one as suspect until testing says otherwise.
Restoration means rebedding loose blocks, replacing those that have broken up, preparing the surface with appropriate abrasives, and coating with a modified epoxy system designed for composite substrates with the markings applied within the system.
Most Granwood floors described as beyond saving are not. We will tell you honestly which situation yours is in.
Where one organisation is responsible for several sports floors, the sensible approach is a programme rather than a series of separate decisions.
We start with a condition survey of every floor: construction, remaining wear layer, state of the finish and structure, markings, moisture, all photographed and recorded. That produces one document showing what the estate holds and what condition it is in, which very few organisations have.
From there the work is prioritised. Some floors need attention this year, some can wait three, some need nothing beyond maintenance. The programme then phases across budget years, taking each hall out of use at the quietest point in its own calendar rather than trying to do everything in one summer.
The advantages compound. Costs fall because mobilisation is spread and the sequence is efficient. Specification is consistent across every site. Documentation is standardised. And nobody is ever in the position of having six floors fail at once.
We work this way with academy trusts, local authorities, leisure operators and universities.
Not every sports floor is timber, and the synthetic surfaces have a genuine place rather than being a cheap alternative.
Point elastic vinyl systems deflect where they are loaded rather than across an area, which makes them forgiving underfoot and well suited to halls with a very mixed timetable. They need no refinishing, they clean easily, and they come in a range of colours that lets a hall be designed rather than simply floored. They have a finite life and are replaced rather than restored when it ends.
Linoleum is the older relation, still found in a great many school halls, and it can often be deep cleaned and resealed rather than replaced.
Polyurethane and modified epoxy systems are seamless, poured or applied as coatings, and are particularly useful over Granwood and cementitious substrates. They can be fully recoated in a new colour with fresh markings, which turns a tired hall into a refurbished one without touching what is underneath.
We work across all of them, and we will tell you honestly when your existing surface is worth keeping.
Buckinghamshire brings a mix of grammar and independent school sport, academy trust estates and a large number of community buildings, and the work divides fairly evenly between them.
School halls are the bulk of it. Grammar and independent schools tend to maintain their floors on a proper cycle and come to us for screen and recoat work before the finish fails, which is the cheapest way to run a floor. Academy halls more often arrive overdue, with the seal gone in the traffic lanes and markings that have been copied rather than set out for several remarks running.
The second group is village and church halls, of which the county has a great many. These are almost always old timber floors with plenty of depth left, buried under decades of polish and scored by chair and table legs. They restore beautifully and for far less than committees expect.
The third is leisure and club facilities, including squash courts, where the finish specification matters more than anywhere else in the building.
We quote by element throughout, so a school business manager or a hall committee can see exactly what each part costs and phase it if the budget requires.
Buckinghamshire enquiries usually resemble one of two projects we are asked about most.
For independent and grammar school halls, St George School in Ascot is the closest. That hall had a Granwood floor which more than one contractor had written off as due for replacement. Granwood is a composite block laid in bitumen rather than timber, and treated as timber it is destroyed. We rebedded the loose blocks, replaced those that had broken up, prepared the surface with appropriate abrasives and coated it with a modified epoxy system with the markings sealed within it. The hall has years of life left, at a fraction of the cost of replacement.
For community buildings, St Katherine Hall is the better comparison: a well loved, well worn floor carrying badminton one evening and a community event the next, restored rather than replaced.
The common thread is that a proper survey changed the recommendation in both cases.
Court relining can be done either way, and the cost difference between them is larger than most facilities expect.
Marking during a sand and seal is always the best value. The floor is already back to bare timber, the setting out sits inside a programme you are paying for anyway, and the lines finish under the new lacquer where they are protected. There is no second closure and no second mobilisation.
As a standalone visit, relining is still a modest job. A typical multi sport hall takes two to three days including preparation, setting out, painting and the seal coat over the top. That is a genuine option where the floor finish is sound and only the line marking has gone.
What is not worth doing is applying markings onto a finished floor and leaving them exposed. It is quicker and cheaper on the day, and it is why so many halls need remarking every few years. If your last set of lines lifted within a season or two, that is almost certainly what happened to them.
Cost is driven by area, condition and specification. Because we do not subcontract, there is no margin stacked on top of another contractor’s price, which is one reason our quotations tend to compare well. Everything is itemised so you can see exactly what you are paying for.
Yes, and we regularly work considerably further afield. Our quotations include travel and mobilisation openly rather than adding them later, so the figure you see is the figure you pay.
No. Courtship Flooring is a commercial contractor working on large-scale sports and institutional floors. Private homes are handled by our sister company Ryan’s Restorations.
None of it. The team that surveys the hall carries out every stage through to the final coat and returns for maintenance, which means one warranty covering the whole system.
Usually, provided the source is fixed first. Damaged boards are cut out and replaced with matching timber before the floor is sanded and sealed as one surface, so the repair disappears into the finish.
Yes, and it is routine. Split, damaged and water damaged boards are cut out and replaced with matching timber laid to the same grain direction, so the repair disappears once the floor is sanded.
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.
Usually a two pack polyurethane in a satin sheen. It holds slip resistance and appearance under heavy use, and satin hides scuffing and avoids glare under the LED lighting most halls now have.
Yes, and we set out from measured dimensions rather than copying existing lines. Courts remarked by tracing the previous set drift over the years, and many halls turn out to be dimensionally out.
Yes. On timber the reliable method is sanding, which removes them completely. Most halls carry markings for at least one sport nobody plays, and taking them off is the cheapest improvement available.
Sealed vacuum extraction on all machines including edge equipment, screening of the working area, and agreement with your site team on isolating doors and air handling routes.
Book a free survey of your floor in Buckinghamshire 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.