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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Newcastle and across the UK. A good deal of our work involves high-volume multi-court facilities where polyurethane and synthetic systems outperform timber on cost of ownership.
Our clients are schools, academy trusts, universities, leisure operators, councils and clubs, and have been since 1987. We cover the full lifecycle of a floor with our own team rather than a chain of subcontractors. Private homes are outside our scope and are served by Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Polyurethane is frequently the right answer for a hall running continuous multi-sport sessions. It is seamless, tolerates furniture and trolleys, cleans easily, and needs no sanding cycle across its life.
The trade-off is that when a synthetic surface finally wears out it is replaced rather than renewed, whereas timber can be sanded and resealed repeatedly. We set both routes out with realistic lifecycle costs rather than steering you toward whichever suits us.
A poured polyurethane system is only as good as the substrate beneath it. The slab has to be sound, level within tolerance, and dry enough that vapour will not push through the finished surface and blister it.
We test, prepare and where necessary level the substrate before any system goes down, and specify a barrier where moisture readings demand one. Skipping that stage is the commonest cause of a seamless floor failing within its first few years.
Synthetic floors are lower maintenance than timber, not maintenance-free. The commonest problem is entirely self-inflicted: the wrong cleaning chemicals leaving a film that dulls the surface and makes it slippery.
Our maintenance service covers deep cleaning to lift residue, patch repairs, re-welding of failed seams and, where the system allows, resealing to restore appearance and grip. We also set the routine for your own team.
The sports hall at St George’s had a Granwood block floor that decades of use had left dull and tired. Granwood cannot be sanded like timber, so we restored it correctly: careful preparation, a modified epoxy coating system and crisp new markings.
The school kept a serviceable floor out of a skip and spent a fraction of what replacement would have cost.
~ 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
When a section of a sprung floor feels dead underfoot, the problem is almost never the boards. A resilient pad has flattened, a batten has split, or a cradle has dropped, and the surface above has stopped moving with the rest of the floor.
The repair is local. We lift the boards over the affected area, replace the failed components with matching ones, check the levels against the surrounding floor and relay the same boards where they are sound. The finish is then blended in, so once the hall is resealed there is no sign of where the work was done.
The post war school halls that make up so much of Newcastle’s stock are now sixty years old, and pads of that age have simply reached the end of their compression life. Replacing them restores the response the floor was designed to give.
A sports floor quotation is a set of measurable parts, and we show every one of them. The area sets the sanding and sealing cost. The condition of the surface sets how much preparation comes before it. The number of sports being marked, and whether any are coming off, sets the marking line. Board replacement, structural repairs and fittings are itemised separately.
Working hours matter too. Overnight and weekend shifts cost more per hour than daytime, and a compressed programme costs more than a sensible one.
Because our own team does the work, there is no subcontractor margin stacked on top. A school bursar in Newcastle can therefore compare our figure line by line with any other and see exactly where the differences fall. If something is optional, we say so, and you decide whether to keep it in.
Sanding a sports hall generates a large volume of fine timber dust, and in a building where teaching or public sessions continue next door, controlling it is a duty, not a courtesy. Our machines run on continuous extraction with bagged collection, the hall doors are sealed, and the ventilation serving the room is isolated for the duration.
We work with your caretaker or estates lead on the access route so that machinery and waste move through the building without tracking dust into corridors. At the end of each shift the hall and the route are vacuumed rather than swept.
Many Newcastle halls sit within tightly planned school or leisure buildings with the hall in the centre, so that containment discipline matters. The finish also benefits, because dust settling into wet seal is the commonest cause of a rough coat.
The last coat going on is not the moment the hall is ready, and the programme we agree with you is built around that. A two pack polyurethane seal takes light foot traffic after around twenty four hours. Equipment, trolleys, mats and full sporting use wait seventy two hours or more, and the seal keeps hardening for about a week after that.
Rushing it is the most common way a new finish is spoilt. Furniture dragged across a floor at forty eight hours leaves marks that cannot be removed without recoating.
We therefore tell you the exact date and time the hall is usable, and we confirm it with the seal manufacturer’s data for the product used. For a Newcastle leisure centre programming bookings, or a school putting exams in the hall, that certainty is worth more than a day saved.
Newcastle gives us university and college sport, city leisure facilities and a substantial number of school sports halls, across a wide range of building ages.
University facilities are busy year round, with the summer filled by conference and external use rather than standing empty, so the working windows are narrow and do not move. Those projects are planned months ahead and staffed to complete inside them.
Leisure centres follow, where booking income means most work is carried out overnight, with the floor sealed at the end of a shift so it is walkable by opening time.
School and academy halls make up the largest group by number, many from the nineteen sixties and seventies with sprung timber floors that are structurally sound but overdue a refinish.
The older stock in the region includes a good deal of Granwood, particularly in school and church halls. It needs a specialist approach rather than timber sanding, and a Granwood floor with sound blocks and an intact bed is almost always worth restoring at a fraction of the cost of replacement.
Newcastle enquiries cluster around a few recurring situations.
The first is a post war school hall whose floor has been recoated repeatedly but never taken back to bare timber. Those accumulated layers eventually cloud, peel at the edges and lift, and adding another coat simply postpones the inevitable.
The second is Granwood, which appears regularly in school and church halls across the region and is frequently written off unnecessarily. Sound blocks and an intact bed mean restoration, at a fraction of the cost of a replacement that would also mean lifting a bitumen bed.
The third is university and leisure facilities where the floor is heavily used but structurally fine, and the question is timing. Those want catching on a screen and recoat cycle before the seal goes through, which is far cheaper than a full refinish and preserves the boards.
Most halls carry four or five sports on the same floor, and the difference between a clear hall and a confusing one is how the sets are ranked. The sport played most sits in the strongest colour with unbroken lines. Secondary sports take colours that read clearly under your lighting, and where two lines run close together one is broken so players know which to follow.
We start by asking what is taught and what is booked, because a set of five a side lines nobody uses simply adds clutter. Taking off a redundant sport costs nothing during a refinish.
LED lighting in many refurbished Newcastle halls has changed how colours appear, and a scheme chosen under fluorescent tubes can merge under new fittings. We check the colours in the hall itself, in daylight and under the lights, before anything is painted.
All of it. We work across Tyne and Wear, Northumberland, Durham and Teesside, and nationally beyond that. Because we plan projects months ahead and travel with our own machinery, distance does not affect the standard or the programme.
Yes. We install area elastic and point elastic timber systems, vinyl, linoleum and polyurethane, and we advise on which suits the room, the users and the budget. Where the existing floor is sound we will say so, because restoration is usually cheaper.
Yes. Every survey, sand, seal, marking and test is carried out by our directly employed team using our own equipment. Nothing is passed to a subcontractor, which is why the standard is consistent and finish dates are kept.
Yes, and most school projects go into them. Summer is the busiest window, so we ask schools to book by spring. Easter and October half term suit screen and recoat visits, which need only a few days including cure.
Yes. Because we handle every stage ourselves, one guarantee covers the whole system, including materials and workmanship. The terms are written into the quotation, and after nearly forty years of trading we are still here to stand behind them.
Yes. We carry out pendulum testing to BS 7976-2 and provide a written report with the readings and positions. It can be done as a standalone check on an existing floor or as a certificate on completion of a refinish.
No. We work exclusively on commercial sports and timber floors for schools, universities, leisure operators, clubs and public bodies. Domestic floor sanding and restoration is handled separately by our sister company, Ryan’s Restorations, and we are glad to pass your details on.
Yes. We regularly work under main contractors on new builds and refurbishments, taking the sports floor package from substrate testing through to marking and handover. We provide the documentation and programme information a principal contractor needs.
Arrange a free survey of your sports hall floor in Newcastle. We will assess the floor, set out what it needs and give you a fixed price and a firm programme. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.