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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Nottingham and across the UK. Much of our work here is for academy trusts, where consistency across an estate matters as much as the quality of any single hall.
Founded in 1987 and still run by the same family, we specialise in commercial sports and timber flooring: new installations, full refurbishments, sanding and resealing, court markings, pendulum testing and maintenance contracts. Domestic enquiries are passed to Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Estates almost always contain floors at very different stages of life: one needing replacement, several needing sanding and sealing, others needing nothing more than a clean and reline. The value of surveying them together is that the work can then be ranked.
Our estate reports set out what cannot wait, what can be deferred a year, and what needs only maintenance, with firm costs against each. That lets a trust phase spending across budget years instead of reacting to whichever hall fails first.
Water damage is the most common serious defect we find, and it is almost always fixable provided the source has been dealt with first. Sealing over a floor that is still getting wet simply buys eighteen months.
Affected boards are cut out and replaced with timber matched by species and grade, the area is levelled into the surrounding floor, then the whole surface is sanded and sealed as one so the repair disappears entirely into the finish.
Institutional work carries institutional requirements, and we treat them as routine rather than an inconvenience: method statements, risk assessments, insurance documentation, CDM compliance where a project falls under it, and the safeguarding considerations that apply on school sites.
Each site receives a documented handover so the duty-of-care file is complete across the estate rather than patchy, which matters when responsibility passes between staff.
The gymnasium at The Bradfield Club had served generations and its floor wore every year of it. We sanded the original timber back to life, made the repairs it needed, then resealed and re-marked the space.
Community facilities work to tight budgets and cannot lose their halls for long, so the programme was planned accordingly and finished on the date agreed.
~ 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 squash court floor is a different discipline from a sports hall. The boards are left bare or finished with a matt, high grip system, never a gloss lacquer, because the constant return to the T polishes the centre of the court smooth long before the corners show any wear.
We sand, repair and refinish squash courts to the standard competitive play needs, replacing split or lifted boards and checking the fixings, which loosen under years of hard stopping and turning. Dust control is tighter than usual because the walls and plaster are part of the playing surface.
Nottingham’s clubs and university facilities often have several courts side by side, and we phase the work so the club keeps playing on the others. Doing the courts alongside the main hall in one visit avoids a second mobilisation charge.
Every set of lines we paint is set out with laser and tape from the dimensions the governing bodies publish, not traced from what is already on the floor. A netball court is 30.5 by 15.25 metres in three equal thirds. Basketball is 28 by 15 metres with the arc at 6.75 metres. Badminton is 13.4 by 6.1 metres for doubles.
Copying old lines is how a hall drifts. Each remark inherits the last one’s errors, and after three or four cycles the thirds are unequal and the arc is no longer true. Players who move between venues feel it without being able to say why.
On timber the lines go down between coats of seal so they sit under the final lacquer and wear with it. Lines painted on top of a finished floor start lifting within a season, which is the commonest marking fault we see across Nottingham.
The floor we hand back will last as long as the cleaning allows it to. The rules are short. Use a neutral pH cleaner diluted to the maker’s rate, never polish or wax, and never a product that promises shine. Polish builds into a film that turns a sports floor slippery within months and has to be removed chemically before any recoat.
Dry dust mopping daily lifts the grit that acts as sandpaper under trainers. Damp mopping once or twice a week with a well wrung mop deals with the rest. A scrubber drier is fine on a sealed timber floor if it is set to low water and the pads are soft.
We show your cleaning team the routine on handover, leave written guidance, and recommend products that suit the floor. Nottingham’s hard water leaves residue with some cleaners, so the choice of product matters more than people expect.
Nottingham gives us university and college sport, city leisure facilities and a substantial number of school and academy sports halls.
University facilities are busy across the full year, with summer conference and external hire filling what would otherwise be a shutdown. The working windows are narrow and fixed, and those projects are planned months ahead and staffed to complete inside them rather than stretched.
Leisure centres follow, where booking income makes long closures expensive. Most of that work happens overnight, with the floor sealed at the end of a shift so it is walkable by opening time and heavy equipment going back once the finish has hardened.
School and academy halls are the largest group by number, many from the nineteen sixties and seventies with sprung timber floors that are structurally sound but have gone too long between refinishes.
The older school and church halls in the city frequently have Granwood floors, which need a specialist approach rather than timber sanding. Most of the Granwood we are asked to look at is worth restoring.
Nottingham enquiries cluster around three recurring issues.
The first is a heavily used university or leisure hall where the wear is even across the floor and the question is timing rather than diagnosis. Those want catching on a screen and recoat cycle before the seal goes through, which preserves the boards and costs a fraction of a full refinish.
The second is Granwood in the older school and church halls. It gets mistaken for timber and sanded accordingly, which does permanent damage, or condemned and quoted for replacement. Neither is usually necessary where the blocks are sound and the bed intact.
The third is post war sprung floors that have lost their response in patches. Dead spots point to failed pads or battens underneath, and the fix is to lift the boards locally and replace the components rather than refinish a floor that will still feel wrong.
The price follows the area, the condition of the timber, the number of markings and the hours you need us to work. We survey free of charge and return a fully itemised fixed quotation, so you can see what each element costs and take out anything optional.
Yes. We work throughout Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, and we travel nationally with our own team and machinery. Any travel or accommodation is shown openly as a separate line in the quotation, so the figure is complete.
Very little outside the hall. Our sanders run on continuous extraction, the room is sealed and the ventilation isolated, and we vacuum the hall and the access route at the end of every shift. Teaching and bookings can continue in adjoining rooms.
For a full sand, reseal and remark of a typical school hall, allow five to seven working days plus seventy two hours of cure before equipment goes back. A screen and recoat needs about two days plus cure. We fix the dates in writing.
Yes. A typical agreement covers an annual condition inspection with a written report, a screen and recoat every two to three years, minor repairs and remarking as needed. It keeps a floor off the full sand cycle and spreads the cost predictably.
Most staining sands out because it sits in the top layer of the finish. Water staining that has gone deep into the timber may leave a shadow, and in that case we cut out and replace the affected boards, matched by species and grade, so the repair vanishes.
Only if the system runs too hot or is brought up too quickly, which dries the timber and opens gaps. The floor needs to be specified for the heating, the surface temperature controlled, and the system commissioned gradually. We can check what you have.
Yes. Rows of desk and chair feet dragged into position score a floor more in a fortnight than sport does in a year. A purpose made protective covering laid before the desks arrive prevents it, and we can advise on the right type for your surface.
Book a free survey of your sports hall floor in Nottingham and we will tell you what it needs, what it costs and when it can be done, all fixed in writing. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.