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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Gloucestershire and across the UK. An easy run from our base, covering independent colleges, city schools and the community buildings between them.
Trading since 1987 and family-owned throughout, we handle indoor sports and commercial timber floors from first survey to long-term aftercare, with our own crew and equipment on site at every stage. Domestic and residential projects are the province of 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
Buildings serving a whole community rarely have the luxury of a single-purpose floor. Sport, markets, meetings, performances and social events all land on the same surface, and furniture rather than activity does most of the damage.
We specify for the actual pattern of use, recommend protective covering for non-sporting events, and are explicit about the compromise involved rather than pretending a single surface excels at everything.
Stage floors have requirements of their own: a surface that tolerates scenery, staging and equipment without permanent marking, and frequently a matt finish so lighting does not reflect into the audience.
We restore stage and performance areas alongside main halls, and where a space serves both drama and sport we specify accordingly rather than compromising one for the other. Sprung construction is available where dance or gymnastics is involved.
Further education facilities combine school-style constraints with something closer to commercial usage: long days, external lettings and heavy sporting programmes.
We plan around academic calendars and lettings income, phase work where a facility cannot close entirely, and provide the documented handover and testing records that estates teams need for their files. The reopening date is fixed in writing before work begins.
Not every floor we save sits in a sports centre. St Katherine’s had the kind of well-loved, well-worn hall floor that carries badminton one evening and a community event the next, and the committee wanted it rescued rather than replaced.
We restored it completely. The hall is now set for another few decades of everything it is asked to do.
~ 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
Community buildings ask more of a floor than almost anything else, because the same square metres take a toddler group, a badminton club, a parish meeting, a fitness class and a wedding reception in the same week.
The characteristic damage is scoring from chairs and tables going out and back constantly, rather than the concentrated wear a sports hall shows. That is good news, because fine scoring sands out easily and these floors usually have plenty of timber left.
The other characteristic is decades of polish. Many community halls have been polished for thirty years, and that build up has to be removed chemically before sanding or it clogs every abrasive. We allow for it rather than discovering it.
We quote these jobs by element so a committee can see exactly what each part costs and phase it across two years if the funds require. That transparency matters more here than anywhere, and it is why much of this work comes by recommendation from one committee to another.
School work is governed by a date that does not move, and everything else is arranged around it.
A full sand and seal of a typical school hall takes one to two weeks, which fits comfortably into a summer holiday. Smaller halls and screen and recoat work fit into a half term. Easter and Christmas suit shorter jobs, though the drying conditions in midwinter need allowing for rather than ignoring.
Summer slots go early. Schools that ring in June are usually looking at the following year, and we would far rather have the conversation in January when there is still choice about dates. Trusts planning several halls should be thinking a full year ahead.
What makes these jobs work is preparation rather than long hours. We survey properly so nothing unexpected appears once the finish comes off, we order materials in advance, we staff the job to the programme instead of spreading a team thin, and we build cure times into the schedule rather than treating them as spare. The hall is back for the first day of term because it was planned to be.
Squash courts are small rooms with a very particular wear pattern, and they need their own specification rather than being treated as miniature sports halls.
The traffic concentrates at the T, where players return after every shot, so a court can look fine at the front and back while the centre has been polished smooth. That polished band is both unpleasant to play on and a genuine injury risk.
The finish is the critical decision. World Squash guidance calls for a light coloured, matt floor with high slip resistance, and a gloss finish on a squash court plays like ice once the first film of dust settles. We sand to the correct degree of openness and use matt high grip systems, because sanding too fine polishes the timber before the seal even goes on.
Court markings are red, 50 millimetres wide, and applied between coats so they survive. Because each court is a separate room we can work through a block one or two at a time, keeping the rest of the club playable.
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.
Gloucestershire is within easy reach of our base, and the work divides between school sport, leisure facilities and a very large number of village and church halls.
School and academy halls are the largest group. Independent schools in the county tend to maintain their floors on a proper cycle and come to us for preventative screen and recoat work, which is the cheapest way to run a sports floor. State and academy halls more often arrive overdue, with the finish worn through in the traffic lanes and markings that have been copied rather than set out.
Leisure and community sports centres follow, where booking income means the work usually happens overnight or across a quiet week.
The rural stock is the third group and often the most rewarding. The county has a great many village halls and church halls with timber floors laid a century ago, buried under decades of polish and scored by chairs and tables. Those restore for a fraction of what committees expect, and a good deal of the work reaches us by recommendation from one hall to the next.
Being local, we can usually survey quickly and fit smaller jobs around larger programmes.
Enquiries from Gloucestershire divide between school sport and a very large stock of community buildings, and the two present quite differently.
School halls generally arrive with wear: the finish gone in the traffic lanes, markings faded, and a hall that has been asked to do too much for too long without attention. Those are straightforward refinishes provided the boards have depth left, which they usually do.
Community and church halls arrive with a different problem entirely. The damage there is fine scoring from chairs and tables rather than concentrated wear, sitting under decades of accumulated polish. That polish has to be removed chemically before sanding or it clogs every abrasive, and it is the item most commonly missed by contractors who do not do this work regularly.
The third recurring issue is moisture in older buildings with solid floors. We take readings as a diagnostic step rather than a formality, because sealing over a damp floor guarantees failure.
Court relining is one of the cheapest interventions available to a facility and often the one that makes the most visible difference for the money.
Price is driven by the number of courts, whether the line marking is going down inside a reseal or as a standalone visit, and how much redundant marking has to be dealt with first. Removing three sets of lines nobody uses makes the job cheaper, not dearer.
On timing, a standalone reline of a multi sport hall is typically two to three days including cure time. A full recolour of a synthetic floor takes four to six days depending on coats and drying conditions.
The hall has to be empty throughout and stay empty while coatings cure. Foot traffic is normally possible around twenty four hours after the final coat and full use at seventy two. Walking on a floor too early is the single most common cause of a marking job needing touching up, and it is entirely avoidable.
We work holidays, weekends and overnight as a matter of routine.
Size, condition and specification set the price. We survey free of charge, take moisture readings and measure remaining board depth, then quote a fixed sum with the scope itemised. If a cheaper approach will genuinely work, that is what we will recommend.
The whole area and its neighbouring counties. We have worked the length of the UK since 1987, and remote projects are simply planned more thoroughly rather than priced at a premium.
We have, as far as Saudi Arabia. International projects are planned as complete programmes with everything agreed and priced in advance.
We can provide the specification detail and firm costings that Condition Improvement Fund and Sport England style applications require, and our survey reports are written with that use in mind.
Our machinery runs with dust extraction throughout and we manage containment so the rest of the building keeps operating. It is a practical requirement in occupied premises, not a courtesy.
Yes, provided it is set up correctly and picks the water up rather than leaving it standing. We are happy to check your machine settings while we are on site.
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.
Yes, and we recommend doing both together. Stages are usually in worse condition than the hall floor, and one visit costs considerably less than two while giving a consistent finish.
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.
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.
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.
Book a free survey of your floor in Gloucestershire 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.