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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Fife and across the UK. We work with schools, colleges, leisure trusts and clubs across the region, planning projects as complete visits.
Founded in 1987 and still run by the same family, we specialise in commercial sports and timber flooring: new installations, full refurbishments, sanding and resealing, court markings, pendulum testing and maintenance contracts. Domestic enquiries are passed to Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
A significant proportion of floors we are asked to quote for refurbishment need nothing more than a proper machine deep clean. Embedded residue dulls the surface and reduces grip, and routine mopping does not shift it.
Deep cleaning starts from four pounds fifty per square metre and frequently restores both appearance and friction without touching the seal. Where that is genuinely all a floor needs, that is what we will recommend.
There is a period in the life of every seal where a recoat costs relatively little and adds several years. Miss it and the lacquer breaks through, the timber begins taking wear directly, and only a full sand will do.
Recognising that window is the main practical value of regular inspection. A light abrasion and fresh coats take a couple of days and a fraction of the cost of sanding.
Court markings wear long before floors do, particularly along baselines and service areas. Most halls benefit from relining every two to three years, and left longer a hall starts to look neglected even where the floor beneath is sound.
Booked alongside a deep clean or recoat it adds very little, and it is the quickest way to make a tired facility look cared for again.
The gymnasium at The Bradfield Club had served generations and its floor wore every year of it. We sanded the original timber back to life, made the repairs it genuinely needed, then resealed and re-marked the space.
Community facilities work to tight budgets and cannot lose their halls for long, so the programme was planned accordingly and finished on the date agreed.
~ 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
Basketball wears a floor in two rectangles. The keys take every rebound, post move and landing, and the finish there can be through to bare timber while the rest of the court still looks respectable.
We mark to current FIBA dimensions: a 28 by 15 metre court with the three point line at 6.75 metres from the centre of the basket, reducing to 6.6 metres in the corners. The restricted area is a rectangle with a no charge semi circle, not the trapezoid still found in many older halls, which is usually the giveaway that a court has not been set out properly in decades.
Sole marking is the other characteristic problem. Basketball shoes grip, and that grip transfers rubber across the whole surface. On a well sealed floor it cleans off. Where the seal has gone thin it works into open grain and stops coming out.
A coloured key or a crest at centre court is applied between coats so it wears with the floor rather than scuffing off, and it costs least while the floor is already open.
Commercial and public buildings need documentation, and providing it in advance rather than on request is part of what distinguishes a specialist contractor.
Before the work you receive method statements and risk assessments specific to the job rather than a generic template, COSHH data sheets for every product we will bring on site, and copies of our public liability and employers liability insurance.
For school sites we provide DBS details for the staff attending, and we work to whatever additional safeguarding arrangements the school or trust requires. Our teams are used to signing in, wearing identification and staying within agreed areas.
On main contractor sites we work to site rules, attend inductions and provide progress reporting in whatever format the contract requires.
At handover you get the product data sheets, the cure times in writing, aftercare guidance and, where requested, the pendulum slip resistance certificate. It goes into the facilities file as a complete record rather than a folder of assurances.
The real saving in looking after a sports floor is not in the refurbishment, it is in avoiding one.
A floor that receives a light screen and recoat every two to three years may never need another full sand. A floor left until the seal has worn through to bare timber will need a full refinish, and will have lost some of its remaining wear layer permanently in the meantime. Over the life of a building that difference is substantial.
A planned programme means scheduled visits rather than reactive calls: deep cleaning, screen and recoat when it is due, minor board repairs, remarking as lines wear, and an annual written condition inspection.
The inspection is the part clients tell us they value most, because it turns an unpredictable risk into a short report with a clear recommendation and a rough cost. That is something that can be put in front of a board or a governing body, and it is a great deal better than finding out in July that a hall will not open in September.
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.
Fife brings us a mix of council leisure facilities, secondary school sports halls and university and college sport, with a good number of community buildings alongside.
Leisure centre work is generally about keeping the building trading. Closing a sports hall for a fortnight stops booking income immediately, so most of this work is done overnight, with the floor sealed at the end of a shift so it is walkable by opening time.
School halls follow the fixed term calendar. The recurring issue is halls that have gone a decade or more without a proper refinish, where the seal has worn through and dirt is now sitting in open timber. Left much longer the staining goes deep enough that sanding will not fully lift it.
Community and club buildings are the third group, and those old timber floors are usually in far better condition than they look under the polish.
Because we travel to reach the area we plan the work as continuous blocks and bring everything with us. Sequencing several projects into one trip brings the cost down for everybody involved.
Fife enquiries usually resemble one of two projects we are asked about regularly.
Medina Leisure Centre is the closest for council and operator run sports halls. Booking income made a long closure impossible, so the work was programmed around the centre timetable, sealed at the end of shifts so the hall was walkable by opening, with dust extraction and screening keeping the rest of the building usable throughout.
Hornbury Academy in Wakefield is the better comparison for school halls: a floor in constant curriculum use that had gone well past its refinish cycle, with a fixed term date and no flexibility at the end of it.
Neither was technically unusual. Both were won on the survey, because knowing what was under the old finish before starting is what allows a fixed price and a date that holds.
Sequencing several facilities into one trip brings the cost down for everybody involved.
It varies with the state of the floor more than anything else. A hall needing only a clean and reline costs very little; one needing full sanding, repairs and resealing costs more but still far less than replacement. We will tell you honestly which category yours is in.
Yes, along with the surrounding area. Projects are planned as complete visits with everything agreed before we travel, so distance affects our logistics rather than your price or the quality of the finish.
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.
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.
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.
The blocks and boards themselves are not the concern, but bitumen adhesive beds used before the mid nineteen eighties can contain it. We treat every bitumen bedded floor as suspect until testing confirms otherwise.
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.
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. 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.
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 Fife 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.