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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Leicestershire and across the UK. Centrally placed and easily reached, which makes both single halls and multi-site programmes straightforward to deliver.
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
A single-court hall can be sanded, repaired, sealed, marked and cured within a school holiday, provided the programme is planned properly and contingency is built in rather than assumed.
We confirm the sequence and the handover date in writing before starting, and we build in the margin that absorbs the unexpected. A floor that is not ready when term begins is a serious problem, not an inconvenience.
Once a surface comes back, old floors occasionally reveal problems nobody knew about: historic water damage, previous repairs in the wrong timber, or bitumen bleeding through mid-century parquet.
Our approach is simple. We stop, tell you what we have found, and price the options before proceeding. Nothing gets sealed over and no additional work happens without your agreement in writing.
Flooring quotations vary widely because scopes vary widely: coat numbers, sub-floor preparation, marking, waste removal and testing are all included by some contractors and treated as extras by others.
Ours itemise the specification explicitly so you can compare properly. Where a competing quote is markedly cheaper, comparing the itemisation usually explains exactly why, and occasionally the cheaper quote is genuinely the right one.
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
Most enquiries reach us as a description of a symptom, and there are a few things that let us give a genuinely useful reply rather than a holding one.
Photographs are the most valuable. Two or three of the whole room, and two or three close up of whatever is worrying you, tell us more than several paragraphs. If there is a worn patch, a stain, a lifting board or a dead spot, photograph that specifically.
Approximate dimensions, or just the number of badminton courts, gives us the area. The rough age of the floor and whether anybody knows what is underneath helps. If you have any record of previous work, even a decade old invoice, that is genuinely useful.
Then tell us what the room is used for and when it could realistically be closed. Those two facts shape the recommendation as much as the condition does.
From that we can usually give an informed steer and a budget range before arranging a survey.
The question we are asked most is when the floor can be used again, and the honest answer is that it depends on the system, which is why we put it in writing rather than giving a rule of thumb.
As a general guide, light foot traffic is possible around twenty four hours after the final coat. Full use, with equipment wheeled back and posts refitted, is usually seventy two hours. Some systems are faster and some are slower, and cold or humid conditions extend both.
Walking on a floor too early is the single most common cause of a job needing touching up, and it is entirely avoidable. Footprints in a curing seal do not polish out. Nor do the marks left by equipment put back a day early.
So we agree access arrangements before we start, we sign the room, and where necessary we arrange for it to be locked. It is not us being difficult. It is the difference between a floor that hands over properly and one that needs us back.
The question we are asked most often, and the answer comes down to three measurements rather than an opinion.
The first is the remaining wear layer. Every full sand takes timber off, and a floor that has been through many cycles may be close to its fixings. Once a sander reaches the tongue the board is finished, and nothing changes that.
The second is the structure. Isolated failed pads and battens are routine repairs. A system that has failed widely, or one that never suited the hall, is a different proposition.
The third is moisture. A slab with an active problem will destroy any floor laid on it, new or refurbished, until the cause is dealt with.
If the wear layer is adequate, the structure is largely sound and the slab is dry, refurbishment is almost always better value and will give many more years. Where those things are not true we say so plainly, because a refurbishment on a failing floor is money spent twice.
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.
Leicestershire brings us a mix of academy trust estates, university sport, leisure facilities and a considerable amount of older community building stock.
Trust work is the largest strand. Where one organisation holds a dozen or more sports halls, the useful first step is a condition survey across the estate producing a costed priority order, because very few trusts have a single record of what condition their floors are in. From there the work phases across budget years rather than arriving as a series of emergencies.
University and college sport follows, with the year round timetable pressure that every campus has and the narrow fixed windows that come with it.
The older stock is the third group. School halls and church halls in the county frequently have Granwood or mid century timber floors, and both are regularly written off when they should not be. A Granwood floor with sound blocks and an intact bed is almost always worth restoring, at a fraction of the cost of replacement.
Village halls make up the rest, and those transform for surprisingly modest sums.
Leicestershire has a good deal of older school and church hall stock, so the most useful comparison is St George School in Ascot.
That hall had a Granwood floor which more than one contractor had said was beyond saving and due for replacement. Granwood is a composite of wood flour and cement pressed into blocks and laid in a bitumen bed. It is not timber, it has no grain, and sanded like timber it is permanently damaged. We assessed the blocks, rebedded the loose ones, replaced those that had broken up, prepared the surface with appropriate abrasives and coated it with a modified epoxy system with the line markings applied within the system rather than sitting on top.
The result is a floor with years of life left at a fraction of the cost of replacement, which would also have meant lifting a bitumen bed that may require specialist handling.
For trusts with several halls, a survey across the estate is the more useful starting point.
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.
Almost always, and it is usually the right answer. Sanding, repairing and resealing costs a fraction of a new floor with far less disruption. We only recommend replacement where moisture or sub-floor failure genuinely rules restoration out.
Every two to three years for most halls. Baselines and service areas wear first, so courts become uneven in appearance long before the floor itself needs attention.
Yes. Every survey produces a written report with moisture readings, board condition, recommended work and firm costs, designed to be usable as budget evidence.
A light abrasion of the existing finish followed by a fresh top coat. It restores grip and appearance at a fraction of the cost of a full sand, and it works whenever the seal is worn but still intact.
Almost always polish or the wrong cleaning product building up, or a seal worn smooth in the traffic lanes. Both are fixable, and both should be dealt with before somebody is injured.
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.
Yes, and for multi site clients it usually should be. We build rolling programmes that spread the spend and take each hall out of use at the quietest point in its own calendar.
Yes. We carry out pendulum slip resistance testing and provide the certificate, which is worth having on file for insurers, governing bodies and facilities audits.
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.
Book a free survey of your floor in Leicestershire 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.