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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Rutland and across the UK. A small county where most work involves school halls and community buildings serving several purposes each.
Established in 1987 and still family-run, we install, refurbish, sand, seal, mark and maintain indoor sports floors for schools, academies, colleges, universities, leisure trusts, local authorities and clubs. Every stage is carried out by our own team. We do not undertake domestic work; that is handled by 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 modest hall gets the same process as a multi-court facility: survey with moisture readings, dust-controlled sanding, matched repairs, correctly built-up seal and accurate markings.
Scale changes the duration and the price, not the method. Smaller jobs are frequently completed inside two or three days, and because repairs are handled in-house rather than subcontracted they remain viable rather than being turned away.
Facilities without a technical estates team are at a disadvantage when contractors disagree about what a floor needs. Our survey report is written to be read by a governor, trustee or committee member rather than a specifier.
It sets out what the floor is, what condition it is in, what the realistic options are and what each costs, in plain language. You can use it to challenge any quotation, including ours.
In a small county, coordinating with a neighbouring school or hall spreads mobilisation across both and reduces the cost for each. It is the single easiest saving available to smaller facilities.
We are happy to arrange that between unconnected organisations and quote each separately, so nobody depends on anybody else’s decision or timetable.
Years of heavy use had left the sports hall floor at Aston University dull, patchy and worn along every busy lane. Our team sanded it back to bare timber, made good the damage, then rebuilt the finish with a durable seal and a full set of new markings, working around a demanding academic timetable.
The before and after photographs show what a properly executed refurbishment delivers: a floor that looks and plays like new, for a fraction of replacement cost and without weeks of disruption.
~ 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 good number of the independent schools and clubs we serve in Rutland have squash courts, and a court is not a small sports hall. It has its own wear pattern and its own rules.
Play concentrates at the T, so the middle of the floor is polished smooth long before the front and back corners show any wear. The governing body asks for a pale, matt, high grip surface, which means the timber is sanded to the right degree of openness and never lacquered to a shine. A glossy squash court plays like ice once a film of dust settles on it.
The red lines are 50 millimetres wide and applied between coats so they last. Boards damaged by racket strikes are cut out and replaced with matching timber before sanding.
Because each court is a separate room, we take them one at a time and the club keeps playing.
Most school and village halls in Rutland have a stage at one end, and it is nearly always in worse condition than the floor in front of it. Scenery, screwed down flats, painted sets and years of stacked chairs leave a surface that is scored, stained and patched with the wrong timber.
We treat the stage as part of the same project. The boards are repaired, the old paint and finish are sanded off, and a new seal is applied in a sheen that suits performance rather than sport. Many schools want the stage slightly less glossy than the hall so it does not reflect stage lighting into the audience.
Doing both in one visit shares the set up, keeps the two floors visually consistent and costs less than two separate jobs. Where the stage has trap doors, lighting recesses or edge trims, we work around them and reinstate everything to the correct level.
When a school in Rutland commissions a new hall, or replaces a floor that has failed, the choice of system beneath the boards matters more than the species on top.
An area elastic floor spreads each footfall across a wide zone. Hardwood strip or engineered boards are fixed over battens, and the resilience comes from rubber pads under the battens, cradles that hold them clear of the slab, or a foam layer beneath a sheet base. The whole floor gives together, which is what protects joints during running and jumping sports and gives a consistent ball bounce.
BS EN 14904 defines the performance a sports floor must reach for shock absorption, deformation, ball rebound and friction, and we specify systems tested to it.
Build height, the sports played, the moisture condition of the slab and the budget all shape the choice. We set out the options with the differences explained, and we install with our own team.
Rutland is small but it holds a disproportionate amount of the kind of building we work in: independent school sport, village halls and community facilities that serve a wide rural area.
Independent school sports halls, gymnasia and squash courts are a significant part of the work here. These are usually well maintained buildings where the expectation of finish quality is high and the work is planned a long way ahead into fixed holiday windows. A good proportion is preventative screen and recoat rather than full refinishing, which is the cheapest way to run a sports floor.
Village halls and community buildings follow. Because the population is spread, these halls tend to do a great deal of work: sport one evening, a parish meeting the next, an event at the weekend. That mixed use scores a floor from chairs and tables rather than wearing it evenly, and it usually sands out well.
We quote by element so a hall committee can see exactly what each part costs and phase it across two years if the funds require.
Rutland is small, but the halls here work hard and the enquiries reflect that.
Independent school sport accounts for a good share. Those halls are generally well maintained and come to us for preventative screen and recoat work rather than rescue, which is exactly how a sports floor should be run.
Village and community halls are the other main group, and because the population is spread, each hall does a great deal: sport one evening, a meeting the next, an event at the weekend. The characteristic damage is fine scoring from chairs and tables rather than concentrated sports wear, which sands out well.
The recurring complication is polish. Halls that have been polished for decades need that build up removed chemically before any sanding, because it clogs abrasives, and it is the item most often missed in quotations from firms that do not do this work regularly.
A bursar or a village hall committee in Rutland should not have to chase a contractor for documents, so ours arrive before the start date as a matter of routine.
You receive risk assessments and method statements written for your building and your job, not a template with the name changed. COSHH data sheets accompany every product we bring in, so your site file shows exactly what was used. Copies of our public liability and employers liability insurance come with the quotation.
For schools we provide DBS details for every operative attending, and our teams are used to signing in, wearing identification and staying within the agreed areas. On sites run by a main contractor we attend inductions and work to the site rules.
At the end you get a handover pack: product data, cure times in writing, cleaning guidance and any test certificates, ready to file.
Light foot traffic in clean soft shoes after twenty four hours. Furniture, sports equipment and staging should stay out for seventy two hours or more, because the two pack polyurethane is still curing beneath the surface and heavy loads leave marks that last. We agree the reopening date before work starts.
No. Every sander and edging machine we use runs on sealed vacuum extraction, with the dust bagged and removed from site. We seal the hall doors, agree how ventilation is isolated with your caretaker and keep corridors clean, so the rest of the school or hall stays in use.
Yes. We carry out pendulum slip resistance testing at several points across the floor and issue a certificate with the recorded values. It tells you objectively whether the surface is within the expected range, and if it is low it points to the cause, usually polish build up or a worn seal.
A dry mop daily to lift grit, and a neutral pH cleaner diluted as directed for a weekly damp mop. Nothing else. Polish, wax and shine restorers leave a slippery film and stop the next seal coat from bonding, which turns a cheap recoat into a full sand later on.
Yes. A crest or badge is painted from your own artwork between coats of seal so it sits under the final lacquer and wears with the floor. We scale it to the centre circle, show you the layout first and match the colours to your branding under the hall lighting.
It can be. We take moisture readings in the boards and, where the readings are high, in the base beneath. Sealing over damp timber traps the moisture and the finish fails early. If there is an active source, a leak or a missing membrane, that needs fixing before we refinish.
The approximate size of the hall or the number of badminton courts, several photographs in daylight including any damage, the sports and events the room hosts, and the dates it could be free. From that we can give a budget range within a day and confirm it after a free survey.
Yes. Our repairs, sanding, sealing and marking are covered by a written guarantee against defects in workmanship and materials, with the terms shown on the quotation. It relies on the cleaning guidance being followed. If anything is not right afterwards, we come back and put it right.
Book a free survey of your sports hall or community floor in Rutland and we will give you a written report, a fixed price and a programme that fits your calendar. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message to arrange a visit.