This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website: Find out more.
Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Sheffield and across the UK. A significant share of our work involves facilities hosting competition, where measurable performance and documented compliance matter as much as appearance.
This is all we do, and we have been doing it since 1987. Installation, restoration, sanding, sealing, line marking, slip testing and maintenance for commercial and institutional buildings, delivered without subcontractors. Residential projects go to 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
Indoor sports surfaces are assessed on four measurable properties: shock absorption, vertical deformation, ball behaviour and friction. BS EN 14904 defines how each is tested and what an indoor sports floor should achieve.
Those properties pull against one another, which is what makes specification a craft. A floor optimised purely for shock absorption feels dead under a ball; one optimised purely for bounce punishes joints. We build to the standard and explain the trade-offs in plain English rather than product language.
A floor that performs well in the middle and poorly at one end is a failed floor, however good the average figure looks. Inconsistency almost always originates beneath the surface: a resilient layer that has compressed, a batten that has lost contact, or a sub-floor that has moved.
We assess across the whole area rather than sampling conveniently, and repair the build-up beneath before refinishing the surface above. Resurfacing over a structural problem simply hides it for a season.
Facilities hosting competition are periodically asked to evidence that their surface is fit for purpose, and an assurance is not evidence. We provide written documentation on completion, including pendulum slip resistance test reports to BS 7976-2 recording values across multiple positions.
Kept on file alongside your maintenance records, that turns an awkward request into a straightforward one.
Our installation at Hornbury Academy shows the full process from bare sub-floor through to a finished, fully line-marked hall, delivered to a fixed programme while the school carried on around us.
For anyone weighing a new floor against another patch-up, it is a useful illustration of what the complete journey involves and what it produces.
~ 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
Many of the school and church halls built across Sheffield between the wars and into the 1970s were floored in Granwood, a composite block of wood flour and cement bonded under pressure and laid in a bitumen bed. It was chosen because it was hard, stable and cheap to keep, and most of those floors are still down.
The trouble starts when Granwood is mistaken for parquet. It has no grain and no wear layer to sand into, so a timber sanding machine scores the block, warms the bitumen and pulls it up through the joints. Once that has happened the floor is far harder to recover.
The right approach is a controlled abrasion, re-bedding of loose blocks, replacement of broken ones and a modified epoxy coating with the markings sealed within it. Because bitumen beds from before the mid 1980s can contain asbestos, we sample and test before lifting anything.
A sports hall floor rarely arrives in the budget on its own. For academies the route is usually a Condition Improvement Fund bid or trust capital; for maintained schools it is the local authority; for leisure trusts and clubs it may be a Sport England or football foundation grant with a match funding element.
Each funder wants the same things from us: a written condition report with photographs and readings, a specification, a firm itemised price and a programme. We produce the report in a format assessors recognise, and we keep it valid if the bid takes a year to land.
Where the full scheme cannot be funded at once, we split it into stages that make sense: structural repairs and a recoat now, the full sand and reline in the following financial year. A Sheffield trust with several halls can spread the work so no floor fails while it waits its turn.
Sheffield’s leisure centres and university sports buildings almost all run a fitness suite beside the hall, and the floor in that room takes a different kind of punishment. It is not wear from running; it is dents from dropped plates, gouges from racks shuffled sideways and chalk ground into any seal that has worn thin.
We split the room by what happens in it. Cardio and stretching areas take a point elastic vinyl or polyurethane surface that is comfortable, quiet and easy to clean. Free weight zones take dense rubber tiles or a purpose built lifting platform, thick enough to protect the slab and quiet enough not to be heard in the studio below.
Where a suite has been laid directly over a timber floor, we check for moisture trapped under the rubber before lifting it, because years of sweat and condensation can have bonded the mat to the lacquer.
Every secondary school hall in Sheffield turns into an exam room in May, and most host parents’ evenings, concerts and lettings the rest of the year. Each of those puts chairs, desks and outdoor shoes on a floor finished for sport, and the scoring builds up quietly until the traffic lanes look grey.
A proper protective covering, laid before the furniture arrives and taped at the joints so grit cannot work underneath, stops nearly all of it. Chair and desk feet want felt or rubber pads. Tape choice matters, because the wrong one lifts the seal when it comes off.
If a hall has already been through several seasons unprotected, a screen and recoat will usually take the scoring out before it reaches the timber. Once it has, only a full sand will.
Sheffield gives us university sport, city leisure facilities and a substantial number of school and academy sports halls, across building stock spanning more than a century.
University and college facilities are busy year round, 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.
Academy and school halls are the largest group by number. We have completed work at Hornbury Academy in Wakefield nearby, and the pattern is consistent: a hall in constant curriculum use, a finish that had gone too long between refurbishments, and a fixed date to be back for term.
Leisure centres follow, where booking income means overnight working is usually the only practical route.
The older halls in the city frequently turn out to be Granwood, particularly in schools and church buildings. It needs a specialist approach rather than timber sanding, and most of what we are told is finished is nothing of the kind.
Hornbury Academy in Wakefield is the closest comparable project for most Sheffield school enquiries.
The hall was in constant curriculum use with community lettings on top, and the floor had gone considerably longer than it should have between refinishes. The seal had worn through where players actually run, dirt had begun working into open timber, and the markings had faded to the point where officiating was awkward.
We surveyed thoroughly first, which is what allowed a fixed price and a date that held. The floor was sanded back to bare timber, damaged boards were cut out and replaced with matching timber, and the hall was resealed with a two pack polyurethane. The markings were set out fresh from measured governing body dimensions rather than traced from the originals, and redundant sports came off while the floor was open at no extra cost.
For university facilities the closer comparison is Aston University, where the difficulty was a year round timetable rather than the floor itself.
The awkward part of relining is rarely the paint. It is finding a window when the hall can be empty and stay empty while the coatings cure.
A standalone reline of a multi sport hall takes two to three days including preparation, setting out, painting and the seal coat over the top. The floor has to be clear throughout, and nobody can walk on it while it cures. Foot traffic is normally possible around twenty four hours after the final coat, with full use including posts and equipment at seventy two.
Walking on a floor too early is the single most common reason a marking job needs touching up, and it is entirely avoidable. So we agree access arrangements before we start, sign the room and, where it helps, arrange for it to be locked.
For facilities that cannot give up three consecutive days, we can often split the hall and reline in halves, or work overnight so the courts are back by opening. We will price whichever routes are practical rather than telling you there is only one.
Far less than replacement, which is the comparison most people have in mind. The price depends on size, the condition of the seal and boards, and what markings you want back. We survey free of charge and quote a fixed, itemised sum, and nothing is added later without your agreement.
Yes. Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster, Barnsley and the Peak District towns are all covered, along with the rest of the north. We bring every machine and material with us at the start and complete the work in one agreed window, so distance from our base makes no difference to the result.
Anything from a single squash court or studio up to a whole leisure estate or a trust with a dozen halls. Small repairs are worth our while because we do them ourselves, and large programmes suit us because one team keeps the standard consistent from the first hall to the last.
Yes, and we suggest it whenever the stage is timber. Stages are usually scuffed by scenery and staging, often want a matt finish to cut reflections under lighting, and cost far less to do while the equipment is already in the building than as a separate visit.
None of it. The team that surveys your floor sands, seals, marks and tests it with our own machinery, and comes back for maintenance. That is why we can commit to a finish date and why one guarantee covers the whole job rather than pieces of it.
Yes. We regularly deliver the sports floor element within a larger refurbishment or new build, working to the main contractor’s programme, site rules, inductions and permit system, and providing progress reports in whatever format the contract requires. We attend design meetings early where the build up needs coordinating.
It can be, if it is designed in from the start. Surface temperatures must be limited, the system brought up gradually each autumn and the timber specified as suitable, with a build up that lets heat through without trapping moisture. Fitting it under an existing sprung floor is rarely worthwhile.
No. Our work is limited to commercial and institutional buildings such as schools, universities, leisure centres, clubs and community halls. Domestic timber floors are handled by our sister company Ryan’s Restorations, who have the right equipment and finishes for houses.
Book a free survey of your floor in Sheffield and we will tell you what it needs, what it will cost and how the work can be programmed around your bookings. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.