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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Northumberland and across the UK. A large, rural county where efficient single-visit programmes matter more than anywhere.
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
A facility a long way from anywhere cannot afford a contractor who works in stages. Everything is planned into one window: survey, repairs, sanding, sealing, marking and any testing, with all machinery and materials brought in at the outset.
Costs are fixed before we travel, so there are no mobilisation charges appearing later and nothing left unfinished pending a return visit.
Where two or three facilities in an area need work, arranging them together spreads the travel and set-up across all of them. Machinery moves a few miles rather than returning to base, and the programme runs continuously.
We are happy to coordinate that between entirely separate organisations and quote each independently, so nobody is committed to anybody else’s timetable or decision.
Rural halls sometimes lack the power supply that floor sanding machinery requires, or have access that will not take a full-size vehicle. Discovering that on the first morning costs a day and a great deal of goodwill.
We establish power, access, storage and working hours at survey and plan around them, bringing generation or smaller plant where necessary. It is a dull part of the job that prevents most of the things that go wrong.
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
A school hall in Northumberland is rarely empty. Lessons fill the day, clubs fill the evening and the summer holiday is often booked for camps and lettings. So the working window is something we plan with you, not something we assume.
The long summer break remains the best time for a full sand, because the floor can cure fully before anybody walks on it. Half terms suit a screen and recoat, which fits inside a week with cure time included. Easter is useful for halls that will be full of exam desks by May.
We confirm the dates in writing with a day by day programme, and we hold to them. If a hall must be back for a fixed event, we start from that date and work backwards, adding a margin so the last coat is never applied the night before.
A floor that feels slippery is a complaint. A floor with a recorded pendulum test value below the expected range is evidence, and evidence is what an insurer, a governing body or a head of estates in Northumberland can act on.
The pendulum test swings a weighted arm with a rubber slider across the surface and records the resistance. We test at several positions across the hall, because a floor is rarely uniform, and we record the results on a certificate you can file.
Where the value is low, the cause is usually one of three things: polish or cleaning residue on the surface, a seal that has worn through in the busy routes, or contamination from a leak or a spill. All three are correctable, and the test tells you which one you have before any money is spent.
We test floors we have worked on and floors we have never seen.
A hall marked for six sports can be read clearly or can be a tangle, and the difference is decided before any paint is opened.
The sport played most in that hall takes the dominant colour and the widest line, usually the full court that fills the space. Secondary sports take contrasting colours, and the least used are marked in a lighter or narrower line so they sit behind the rest. Netball, basketball and badminton are the usual hierarchy in a Northumberland school hall, with five a side and volleyball behind them.
Colours are chosen in the room under the actual lighting, because two shades that look distinct on a chart can merge under LED fittings. Where a club shares the hall, we ask which sport they need to read fastest.
The result is a floor a referee can follow at a glance and a pupil can understand without explanation.
Northumberland is a large, largely rural county, and the work reaches us predominantly from school sports halls, community leisure facilities and village buildings.
Journeys across the county take considerably longer than the map suggests, so we plan the work as continuous blocks and bring everything we need with us rather than expecting to collect materials locally. That makes these projects more thoroughly planned than a job close to base.
School halls are the largest group, and in many communities the school hall doubles as the principal indoor sports space for the surrounding area, taking club training and community lettings alongside curriculum use. That wears a finish faster than the timetable alone would suggest.
Village halls and community buildings follow, and those old timber floors are usually in far better condition than they look under decades of polish, with plenty of board depth left.
Moisture readings matter in older rural buildings with solid floors and limited damp proofing, and we take them as a matter of course rather than a formality.
Northumberland enquiries reflect a rural stock where each hall works harder than its timetable suggests.
The most frequent is a school hall serving as the community sports facility for a wide area, taking curriculum use, club training and evening lettings on the same floor. That volume wears a finish faster than anyone budgets for, and those halls often arrive overdue with the seal gone in the busiest routes.
The second is village halls where decades of polish sit over a perfectly sound timber floor. Removing that build up chemically before sanding is essential, and it is the step most often left out of cheaper quotations.
The third is moisture in buildings that stand unheated for long periods and are then used intensively. Readings before sealing are a genuine diagnostic step here rather than a formality.
Sequencing several halls into one visit brings the cost down considerably.
Most of the scoring we sand out of school hall floors was not caused by sport. It was caused by exam desks, stacking chairs, staging and trestle tables dragged across a finish that was never designed for steel feet.
The answer is a protective covering laid before the furniture arrives and lifted afterwards. Purpose made roll out floor protection is quick to lay, stores in a corner, and takes the damage that would otherwise go into the seal. For halls in Northumberland that host village events, elections and summer fairs as well as PE, it pays for itself within a year or two.
Felt pads on chair and desk feet help, though they fall off and get forgotten. Rubber castors on staging and portable goals matter more.
We advise on the right covering for your floor and how to store and handle it, because a badly handled covering can mark a floor too.
Light foot traffic in clean soft shoes is fine after twenty four hours. Wait seventy two hours or more before wheeling in goals, trampolines, mats or staging, because the two pack polyurethane is still hardening and heavy loads leave permanent impressions. We confirm the timings for your system in writing.
No. All of our machines, including the edge sanders, run on sealed vacuum extraction and the dust is bagged on site. We seal the hall doors, agree with your caretaker how the ventilation is isolated, and keep the corridors clean, so teaching in adjoining rooms carries on as normal.
The approximate hall dimensions, several photographs of the surface and any damage, a note of the sports played and the dates the hall could be free. From that we give an indicative figure quickly, then confirm it after a site survey before any commitment is made.
Almost always a failure beneath the boards: a compressed pad, a cracked batten or a cradle that has dropped. Sanding does nothing for it. We lift the boards locally, replace the failed components and relay them, leaving the rest of the floor untouched, then refinish.
Yes, and it is the ideal time. Sunken sockets for netball posts and badminton uprights loosen and become trip hazards as a floor ages. While the floor is bare we can reset, replace or relocate them to match the new setting out, and add flush covers where sockets are redundant.
Yes. Our sanding, sealing, repairs and marking are guaranteed in writing against defects in workmanship and materials, with the terms set out on the quotation. The guarantee assumes the cleaning guidance we provide is followed, and we remain on the end of the phone for advice afterwards.
No. A sound floor needs a screen and recoat every two to three years and a full sand roughly every ten. A hall with heavy community use may sit at the shorter end. We inspect and tell you when it is due, which is better than refinishing on a fixed date.
Yes. Site specific risk assessments and method statements, COSHH sheets for every product, insurance certificates and DBS details for our operatives are sent before the start date. We sign in, wear identification and work within the areas agreed with your site manager throughout.
Tell us about your sports hall in Northumberland and we will arrange a free survey, take the readings that matter and give you a fixed written price with a realistic programme. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message today.