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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Lancashire and across the UK. A good deal of our work involves older and converted buildings where what lies beneath the floor is undocumented.
This is all we do, and we have been doing it since 1987. Installation, restoration, sanding, sealing, line marking, slip testing and maintenance for commercial and institutional buildings, delivered without subcontractors. Residential projects go to 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
Converted mills, church halls and older civic buildings frequently have floors laid over structures nobody documented. Assuming what is underneath is how contractors end up back on site six months later.
We investigate rather than assume: moisture readings, level surveys and, where necessary, opening up a small area to establish the actual build-up before quoting. It occasionally produces unwelcome news, but it produces it before you have committed rather than afterwards.
Older buildings rarely offer a level substrate, and laying a sports floor over an uneven one produces dead spots, uneven wear and, in extreme cases, a failed installation.
Levelling compounds, packing and sub-floor correction are all part of the work where the survey shows they are needed. They are itemised in the quotation rather than appearing as a variation once work is under way.
Fitting a new floor into an existing building is a different exercise from a new build. Access, height, thresholds, existing services and the need to keep the rest of the building operating all constrain what is possible.
We survey those constraints first and specify a system that fits them, including low-profile sprung construction where height is tight. The result performs properly rather than being a compromise discovered on the first day.
Our installation at Hornbury Academy shows the full process from bare sub-floor through to a finished, fully line-marked hall, delivered to a fixed programme while the school carried on around us.
For anyone weighing a new floor against another patch-up, it is a useful illustration of what the complete journey involves and what it produces.
~ 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
Underfloor heating and timber sports floors can work together, but the combination has to be designed rather than assumed, and we see the consequences when it is not.
Timber moves with moisture content, and heating from below drives moisture out of the boards. If the system is run too hot, or brought up too quickly at the start of a season, boards shrink, gaps open and in extreme cases the floor cups or splits. None of that is repairable by refinishing.
The requirements are straightforward. Surface temperature has to be limited and controlled, the system needs commissioning and gradual warming rather than being switched on in October at full output, and the timber needs to be specified as suitable for use over heating.
Where we are installing over an existing system we will ask for the commissioning records and the operating parameters. Where we are refinishing a floor that has suffered from a badly run system, we will tell you that the finish is the symptom rather than the problem.
Timber floors move with the humidity of the building around them, and a great many problems blamed on workmanship are actually a building management issue.
Gaps that open every winter and close every summer are the classic pattern. Heating dries the air, the boards give up moisture and shrink, and the gaps appear. Come summer the moisture returns and they close. That is normal behaviour rather than a fault, though it can be reduced by keeping the building within a more stable range.
The problems start at the extremes. Very dry heated air over a long winter can shrink boards enough to split them or pull them off their fixings. Very damp conditions, particularly in an unheated hall that is suddenly used intensively, cause expansion, and where the perimeter gaps have been closed by later flooring or skirting the floor has nowhere to go and lifts in the middle.
Running ventilation after use, rather than only during it, makes a measurable difference in halls that get hot and humid.
Sports floors are full of holes, and how they are dealt with says a good deal about the quality of a job.
Badminton and volleyball posts sit in floor sockets, and those sockets have to finish flush with the surface and stay watertight. During a refinish we lift the covers, clean out years of accumulated debris and dust, protect the sockets from sealer, and reset them to the new floor level. Sanding around a socket cover and sealing over it is the shortcut, and it leaves a raised ring that catches feet and machinery.
Basketball post fixings, wall bar mountings and floor boxes for power get the same treatment. Where a fitting has been removed at some point and the hole filled badly, we make it good properly with matching timber rather than filler.
Inspection covers, expansion joints and threshold trims all need setting to the finished level too. It is detail work and it is largely invisible when done well, which is rather the point.
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.
Lancashire gives us a broad mix, with academy trust estates, council leisure facilities, university and college sport and a large number of community buildings.
Academy work is the pattern we see most. A trust holding a dozen schools has a dozen sports halls of widely differing ages and conditions, usually with no single record of what state they are in. Surveying the whole estate and producing a costed priority order turns that into a phased programme rather than a run of emergencies.
We completed work at Harris Academy in the wider region, and the constraints were typical: a hall in constant curriculum use, a finish that had gone too long, and a fixed date to be back for the first day of term.
Leisure centre work follows, where the priority is keeping the doors open, and school and community halls make up the rest.
A good proportion of the older stock here is Granwood or mid century timber, and both are frequently written off unnecessarily. A survey usually finds a floor worth restoring.
Harris Academy is the project we point to most often for Lancashire and the wider north west, because the constraints are the ones almost every school here faces.
The hall was in constant curriculum use with community lettings on top, and the floor had gone considerably longer than it should have between refinishes. The seal had worn through where the traffic actually runs, and the markings had faded past the point of easy officiating.
We surveyed properly first, which meant nothing unexpected appeared once the old finish came off. The floor was sanded back to bare timber, damaged boards were cut out and replaced with matching timber, and the hall was resealed with the markings set out fresh from measured governing body dimensions rather than traced from the originals. Redundant sports lines came off while the floor was open, at no extra cost.
The hall was handed back on the agreed date, because the date was planned to rather than hoped for.
Repainting is usually understood as relining only, but on synthetic floors we can change the appearance of the entire hall, and it is one of the highest impact things a facility can do on a modest budget.
A polyurethane or modified epoxy floor that has gone patchy, faded or simply dated can be recoated in a new base colour, with fresh court markings applied over the new coating. The hall goes from looking worn out to looking refurbished without touching the substrate underneath, and the relining is carried out as part of the same programme rather than as a separate visit.
Colour choice is worth proper thought. Darker bases show dust and scuffing quickly and can make a hall feel smaller. Mid tone greys, blues and greens hide marks, sit well under LED lighting and let the line colours read clearly against them.
Where a school or club wants its identity on the floor, this is the moment. Coloured keys, a contrasting centre circle or a crest at centre court all go down alongside the relining rather than as a separate job later, which is considerably cheaper than coming back for them.
Considerably less than most people expect, because restoration rather than replacement is usually the answer. A full sand and seal typically costs a small fraction of a new floor. The survey is free, the quotation is fixed, and nothing is added later without your agreement.
The full area and the counties around it. Where a facility is some way from us, we bring all machinery and materials at the outset and complete everything within one agreed window.
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.
Protective covering laid over the playing surface takes the punishment from desk and chair legs and lifts quickly afterwards. It costs far less than repairing the damage.
It can if it is run too hot or brought up too quickly, which dries the boards and opens gaps. The system needs proper commissioning and controlled surface temperatures, and the timber needs to be specified as suitable.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A well maintained hall wants a light screen and recoat every two to three years and a full sand roughly every ten. Sticking to that keeps the boards alive far longer, because every full sand removes timber permanently.
Book a free survey of your floor in Lancashire 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.