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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Northamptonshire and across the UK. Its position at the centre of the motorway network makes multi-site programmes here unusually efficient to deliver.
We are specialists rather than generalists, which after nearly forty years means a depth of knowledge on sports and commercial timber floors that a general contractor cannot match. Every stage is completed in-house. We do not quote for domestic work; Ryan’s Restorations handles that side.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Mobilisation is a real cost in this trade: getting crews, machinery and materials to site, and back again. On a single hall it is absorbed into the price; across several sites booked separately it is paid several times over.
Grouping work, whether across one estate or between neighbouring facilities that book together, spreads that cost and reduces the price for everyone involved. We will actively suggest it where we can see the opportunity.
Most British sports halls cannot accommodate full-size courts for every sport they host, so the practical question is how to fit the best possible court into the space while retaining safe run-off to the walls.
Run-off is a safety requirement, not a nicety: players run out of court at speed. Where a full court will not fit we mark a correctly proportioned reduced court rather than squeezing the dimensions, and explain what that means for competitive use.
A sports floor has to work with the equipment that goes into it: net post sockets, badminton and volleyball fixings, and the covers that keep them flush and safe when not in use.
These are frequently an afterthought and then a permanent nuisance. We coordinate socket positions with the marking layout during installation and refurbishment, so posts land where the courts actually are and covers sit level with the surface.
The sports hall floor at De Wint School had reached the end of its seal: grey through the middle, markings closer to guesswork than instruction, and a surface that felt slippery however often it was cleaned.
We sanded it back to clean timber, repaired what needed repairing, resealed and re-marked. The hall reopened with a deep, glossy finish that reads as newly installed, delivered inside a planned holiday window.
~ 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
Very few Northamptonshire schools pay for a floor from a single year of budget, and the ones that plan well treat it as a capital item with a route to funding.
For academies the Condition Improvement Fund is the usual route, and a bid stands or falls on evidence: a dated condition report, photographs, moisture readings and a costed specification that shows the cheapest effective option as well as the full one. Our survey reports are written to be lifted straight into that application. Maintained schools go through the local authority capital programme, and clubs and community facilities look to Sport England and the district council.
Where a bid fails or only part of the money arrives, the work can be phased. Urgent repairs and a recoat this year, the full sand and reline the next, with the report ranking each element so nothing unsafe waits.
The seal on a sports floor is dry to the touch within hours, and that is exactly when the damage gets done, because dry is not the same as hard. Two pack polyurethane keeps curing for days after it stops feeling tacky.
Our handover rule is simple. Twenty four hours after the final coat the floor takes light foot traffic in clean footwear. Seventy two hours or more before equipment, staging, stacked chairs or anything on wheels goes back, and longer in a cold hall, because low temperatures slow the chemistry. Full hardness arrives around a week in.
We build those hours into the programme, so the reopening date we give a Northamptonshire school or leisure centre already includes them. A rushed hall shows tyre marks and chair scuffs that a patient one never does.
People are often surprised by how much of a floor project happens before a machine is switched on, so it is worth setting out what the first day actually looks like.
We arrive early and start by clearing and protecting. Equipment comes off the floor, wall bars and fittings are sheeted, socket covers are lifted, and the working area is screened from the rest of the building. Doors and air handling routes that need isolating are dealt with at this point, in agreement with your site team.
Then we take a final set of readings. Moisture in the boards, and the slab if there is any doubt, because conditions can change between survey and start.
Only then does sanding begin, and the first pass is the one that tells us what we are really dealing with. Anything we flagged as likely at survey usually appears here. If something unexpected turns up, you hear about it that day rather than in an invoice later.
Northamptonshire brings us a mix of academy trust estates, leisure facilities, university sport and a good number of community buildings.
Trust work is the pattern we see most. Where one organisation holds a dozen or more sports halls, a condition survey across the whole estate producing a costed priority order is far more useful than reacting hall by hall. It lets the spend be phased across budget years and stops several floors reaching crisis in the same summer.
Individual school halls arrive for the familiar reasons: a finish worn through in the traffic lanes, markings that have been copied rather than set out for several remarks running, or a hall that has become slippery and is now an insurance question rather than a nuisance.
Leisure and community sports centres follow, where booking income means overnight and weekend working.
We completed the refinish at Aston University nearby, which is a fair illustration of how we handle a busy facility with no long shutdown: plan to the window, staff it properly, and hand back on the agreed date.
Northamptonshire enquiries divide between trust estates and individual halls, and the questions asked are quite different.
Trusts generally want a view across several buildings rather than a price for one. A condition survey covering every hall, producing a costed priority order, is far more useful than quoting the floor that happened to fail first, and it lets the spend be phased across budget years.
Individual halls arrive with the usual symptoms: a finish worn through in the traffic lanes, markings faded past the point of officiating, or a floor that has become slippery and is now an insurance question.
The third recurring item is markings that have drifted. Courts remarked by copying the previous set move over time, and halls that have been done several times that way are frequently out. We set out from measured governing body dimensions, which often corrects errors nobody had thought to check.
Most sports floors we resand early were not worn out by sport. They were worn out by the cleaning cupboard.
The routine that works is short. Dry mop or vacuum daily to lift grit before feet grind it in. Damp mop weekly with a neutral pH cleaner made for sealed timber, using as little water as the job allows. Scrubber driers are fine on the correct pad with the water flow turned low. What ruins a floor is polish, wax and any product sold on shine, because they sit on top of the seal, turn slippery, and have to be stripped chemically before anyone can recoat.
We hand a written care sheet to every Northamptonshire client at handover and are happy to talk your cleaning contractor through it, because they are the people who decide how long the finish lasts.
It depends on area, condition and what the hall needs to do afterwards. A screen and recoat is the least costly, a full sand with repairs and new markings the middle, and a new sprung system the largest. We measure first and give a fixed, itemised price.
Yes, and we work well beyond it. The county sits close to our main routes, so we can often fit a single hall around a larger programme nearby, which keeps the cost down. Travel is inside the quotation, never an extra on the invoice.
Machines run on extraction throughout, doorways are screened, and shared ventilation is isolated in agreement with your site team. We vacuum between passes. Adjacent rooms stay in use, which matters when a hall sits in the middle of a working school.
A typical single court hall takes four to five working days including sanding, repairs, sealing and marking, plus the cure. Larger halls and Granwood restorations take longer. We confirm the programme in writing, and the finish date we give is the one we keep.
Yes, and it is routine work. Split, cupped or water stained boards are cut out and new timber of the same species and grain direction is let in. Once the whole floor is sanded and sealed, the repair is very hard to find.
The timber and Granwood blocks are not the issue, but bitumen adhesive beds laid before the mid nineteen eighties can contain asbestos. We treat any bitumen bedded floor as suspect until a sample is tested, and we plan the job around the result.
Satin, in nearly every case. Gloss looks striking on handover day but shows scuffs within weeks and throws glare under LED lighting, which players and officials dislike. A satin sheen hides wear, reads well on camera and keeps its appearance far longer.
Yes. We carry out pendulum testing at several points in dry and wet conditions and issue a certificate for your insurer, governing body or audit file. Many Northamptonshire trusts have it done across every hall at once so the records match.
Book a free survey of your sports hall floor in Northamptonshire. We measure and inspect, then give you a written report, a fixed price and a date you can plan around. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.