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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Cardiff and across the UK. We have delivered full sports hall refurbishments across Wales, planned as complete programmes with fixed dates agreed before we travel.
Since 1987 we have worked on indoor sports floors the length of the country and internationally. We remain family-run and deliberately specialist, covering installation through to long-term aftercare with our own team and machinery. We take no domestic work; Ryan’s Restorations covers that.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
A refurbishment runs in a fixed sequence, and skipping steps is where results go wrong. Survey and moisture readings first. Then dust-controlled sanding back to clean timber, so the rest of the building keeps operating. Damaged boards cut out and replaced with matched timber. Gaps attended to and the surface fine-sanded.
Seal is then applied in the correct number of coats with proper curing between them, with markings laid between coats so the lines sit protected within the finish. Finally a documented handover setting out exactly when the floor takes traffic.
Most halls carry four or five sets of court markings at once, and the difference between a legible floor and a confusing one is planning rather than paint. We establish which sport leads, mark that court so it reads instantly, then work the others in behind it using colour and line weight to create a clear hierarchy.
Each court follows its current governing body specification, and crests can be sealed beneath the final coats. Full detail is on our line marking page.
The question every facilities manager actually wants answered is when they can reopen. Seal systems cure in stages: light foot traffic first, then equipment and posts, then full play, and rushing any of those stages damages a finish that has just been paid for.
We set out the schedule precisely at handover so bookings can be taken with confidence, and the reopening date is agreed in writing before work begins rather than estimated afterwards.
The sports hall floor at Treguib had given years of service and looked it. Our team took it back to clean timber, repaired the wear, then resealed and re-marked the full hall.
The result is a floor that plays and looks like new for a fraction of replacement cost, delivered a long way from our base and still on the date we promised.
~ 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
Every job is carried out by our own directly employed team using our own equipment. Nothing is passed to a chain of subcontractors, and that has practical consequences rather than being a slogan.
It means the people who survey your floor are connected to the people who work on it, so what was agreed is what happens. It means we control the programme rather than waiting on somebody else availability, which is why we can commit to a finish date and hold it. And it means the standard is consistent, because it is the same team on the last day as the first.
It also matters for the specialist work. Granwood restoration, parquet, sprung floor repairs and pendulum testing are not things you can subcontract to a general flooring firm and expect a good result. They are learned over years.
Courtship Flooring has been doing this since 1987, and a good deal of the team has been with the company for a very long time. That continuity is the reason we can look at a floor and know what is under it.
The complaints that bring people to us are usually about how a floor feels rather than how it looks, and feel comes from the structure.
A hall with dead spots, where a section feels lifeless underfoot, has almost always lost resilience below the boards. A pad has compressed, a batten has cracked, or a cradle has failed. The fix is local: we lift the boards over the affected area, replace the failed components and relay. The rest of the floor is untouched.
Squeaks and movement generally mean loose fixings or battens that have shifted, and again the repair is targeted rather than wholesale.
What matters is that these are structural problems and sanding does nothing for them. A floor refinished without addressing a failed subfloor looks superb and still feels wrong, and the money is largely wasted. We check underneath at survey for exactly that reason, and we will tell you when a floor needs structural work before it needs a new finish.
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.
We have been trading since 1987, and the reason a firm lasts that long in this trade is that people call it back rather than calling somebody else.
Our work is guaranteed, and if something is not right we come back and put it right. That sounds like the least anybody should offer, and in this industry it is not as universal as it should be.
What we will not do is guarantee against things outside our control. A floor sealed over a slab we advised was too wet, a hall where the cleaning regime uses polish despite the guidance, or damage from a leak in the building are not workmanship issues, and we will explain the distinction at the time rather than in the small print.
Equally, we will tell you before we start when we think a job carries risk. If a floor is marginal, if a repair may not match perfectly, or if a stain may not fully come out, you will hear it at survey. Managing expectations honestly is a large part of why this works.
Cardiff gives us a strong weighting towards university sport, the city leisure estate and secondary school facilities, and each has its own working pattern.
University and college facilities are busy across the full year, with summer conference and external hire filling what would be a shutdown elsewhere. The windows are narrow and they do not move, so these projects are planned well in advance and staffed to complete inside them.
Leisure centres and community sports facilities come next, and there the driver is booking income. Closing a sports hall for a fortnight is expensive, so most of this work happens overnight or across an agreed quiet period, with the floor sealed at the end of a shift so it is walkable by opening.
School and academy halls make up the rest, along with a steady flow of church and community buildings whose timber floors are usually in far better condition than they look.
Because we travel to the area we will generally look to sequence several projects together where we can, which brings the cost down for everybody involved. It is worth mentioning if you know of another facility considering work.
The projects most relevant to Cardiff enquiries are our university and leisure work rather than anything defined by location.
Aston University is the closest parallel for campus sport. The hall was heavily booked, the finish had worn through in the traffic lanes, and there was no long summer shutdown because conference and external hire filled it. We surveyed early, ordered materials ahead, staffed the job to the window and handed the floor back on the agreed date with markings set out fresh rather than copied.
Medina Leisure Centre is the better comparison for operator run facilities. Booking income made a long closure impossible, so the work was sequenced around the centre timetable with the noisiest operations falling when the building was quietest, and sealed dust extraction kept the surrounding areas usable.
Both were straightforward technically. Both depended on the survey being thorough enough that nothing surprising appeared once the old finish came off.
Relining is the natural moment to add the things that make a hall look like yours rather than institutional, because the setting out is being done anyway.
A school crest or club badge at centre court is one of the few changes that genuinely lifts a room for a modest cost. It is painted from your own artwork between coats of seal, so it sits under the final lacquer and wears at the same rate as the floor around it. Anything applied over a finished floor scuffs and peels within a season, whatever the supplier claims.
Colouring the key or a zone works the same way and has the same effect. A filled key in a contrasting colour makes a court read instantly and looks designed rather than accidental.
We scale the artwork properly to the circle or area it is going into and show you a layout before anything goes down, with colours matched to your own brand rather than approximated from a chart.
There is no standard rate, because no two floors arrive in the same condition. What we can promise is that we will identify the cheapest option that genuinely solves the problem and quote it alongside the fuller alternatives, with firm figures rather than ranges.
Yes, throughout. Distance is a logistics question rather than a quality one, and we resolve it by planning the whole programme in advance rather than working in stages.
Usually straightforward on a sound floor. Removing old lines completely requires sanding, so we will plan the new layout to work with what is already there and explain the options.
A well-installed and properly maintained timber floor can serve for decades because it can be renewed repeatedly. Synthetic surfaces typically run fifteen to twenty years before replacement.
Yes, and we do regularly. If a floor needs nothing more than a proper clean, that is what we will say. It costs us a job and earns us the next five.
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.
Light foot traffic is normally possible around twenty four hours after the final coat, and full use with equipment back at seventy two hours. We confirm exact times for the system used, because they vary.
Surface marks and worn lacquer come out easily. Deep water staining and anything soaked into open timber may remain faintly visible, and we will tell you honestly at survey what to expect.
Satin or matt in almost every case. Gloss looks impressive at handover and shows every scuff within weeks, as well as producing noticeable glare under modern lighting.
A typical hall takes one to two weeks from first machine to final coat, depending on size, how much board repair is needed and how many coats the seal requires. You get a day by day programme before we start.
An area elastic floor deflects across a wide area when loaded, which suits ball sports. A point elastic floor deflects only where loaded, which suits fitness and dance. Combined systems provide both.
Book a free survey of your floor in Cardiff 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.