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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Somerset and across the UK. Our workshop and yard are here, which means surveys within days, follow-up visits that are never a production, and no travel loaded into the quotation.
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
Our surveys generate evidence rather than opinions. We take moisture readings in and beneath the floor, assess board condition and the depth remaining for future sanding, check the sub-floor for movement and dead spots, and compare markings against current specifications.
You receive a written report ranking what needs attention now, what can reasonably wait and what needs only maintenance, with firm costs against each line. It is written to be usable as budget evidence, and it is yours to keep whether or not we do the work.
A surprising number of floors we are asked to quote for refurbishment need nothing more than a proper deep clean. Embedded residue and grime dull a surface and reduce grip, and no amount of routine mopping shifts it.
Machine deep cleaning starts from four pounds fifty per square metre and frequently restores both appearance and friction without touching the seal. Where it is genuinely all that is required, that is what we will tell you, even though the bigger job would pay us better.
Not every visit is a full refurbishment. Localised damage, a lifting board, a water-affected section or a worn patch by an entrance can usually be repaired in isolation, provided the timber is matched properly by species and grade so the repair disappears into the finish.
Because repairs are done in-house rather than subcontracted, small jobs are worth our while and get the same care as large ones.
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
The complaint we hear most about other contractors is the variation that appears once the old finish comes off, so we price to avoid it.
Our quotations are broken down by element rather than given as a single figure. Preparation, sanding, board repairs, sealing, line marking and testing are each priced separately. If the budget will not stretch this year you can see exactly which part to defer rather than losing the whole scheme.
Because we survey properly, we know what is likely to appear once the floor is bare, and we allow for it in the quotation as expected work rather than presenting it later as an extra. The only things we would ever come back to you about are genuinely unforeseeable, and in twenty years that has been rare.
We also quote alternatives where they exist. If a screen and recoat will do what you need instead of a full sand, we will price both and tell you which we would choose. We would rather quote the cheaper option and see you again in five years.
School work is governed by a date that does not move, and everything else is arranged around it.
A full sand and seal of a typical school hall takes one to two weeks, which fits comfortably into a summer holiday. Smaller halls and screen and recoat work fit into a half term. Easter and Christmas suit shorter jobs, though the drying conditions in midwinter need allowing for rather than ignoring.
Summer slots go early. Schools that ring in June are usually looking at the following year, and we would far rather have the conversation in January when there is still choice about dates. Trusts planning several halls should be thinking a full year ahead.
What makes these jobs work is preparation rather than long hours. We survey properly so nothing unexpected appears once the finish comes off, we order materials in advance, we staff the job to the programme instead of spreading a team thin, and we build cure times into the schedule rather than treating them as spare. The hall is back for the first day of term because it was planned to be.
The hardest constraint in this trade is rarely technical. It is a building that has to keep functioning while we work in it.
Where a hall genuinely cannot be taken out of use for a fortnight, there are three practical routes. The first is splitting the floor and working in halves, keeping part of the space available while we sand and seal the other. It adds a little to the cost and a couple of days to the programme, and it keeps the doors open.
The second is overnight working, sealing at the end of a shift so the floor is walkable by opening and heavy equipment goes back once the finish has hardened properly.
The third is scaling the work down. A screen and recoat over a long weekend restores grip and appearance without the full closure, and for a floor whose seal is worn but intact it may be all that is needed anyway.
We will price whichever routes are viable so you can weigh disruption against cost rather than being told there is only one option.
Squash courts are small rooms with a very particular wear pattern, and they need their own specification rather than being treated as miniature sports halls.
The traffic concentrates at the T, where players return after every shot, so a court can look fine at the front and back while the centre has been polished smooth. That polished band is both unpleasant to play on and a genuine injury risk.
The finish is the critical decision. World Squash guidance calls for a light coloured, matt floor with high slip resistance, and a gloss finish on a squash court plays like ice once the first film of dust settles. We sand to the correct degree of openness and use matt high grip systems, because sanding too fine polishes the timber before the seal even goes on.
Court markings are red, 50 millimetres wide, and applied between coats so they survive. Because each court is a separate room we can work through a block one or two at a time, keeping the rest of the club playable.
Somerset is where Courtship Flooring is based, and it is the county we know better than any other. That has practical advantages for the facilities here.
We can survey quickly, often within days rather than weeks. We can fit smaller jobs around larger programmes elsewhere, which helps on both cost and timing. And where something goes wrong with a floor unexpectedly, whether that is a leak, a failed board or a hall that has suddenly become slippery, we can get somebody there quickly rather than scheduling it for a fortnight hence.
The work itself covers the full range. School and academy sports halls, leisure centres and community sports facilities, independent school sport, squash courts, village halls and church halls. The county has a large number of older community buildings whose timber floors are usually in far better condition than they look under decades of polish.
Being local also means a good deal of this work comes by recommendation, from one school business manager or hall committee to another, which is the way we would rather grow.
Being based here, we see the full range of Somerset enquiries, and three recur more than any others.
The first is urgent. A leak, a failed board, a hall that has suddenly become slippery before an inspection. Because we are local we can usually get somebody there quickly rather than scheduling it a fortnight out, and that responsiveness is the main practical advantage of using a contractor based in the county.
The second is schools planning ahead, wanting a summer slot booked and a written specification they can put in front of a business manager. Those conversations are best had in January rather than June.
The third is community halls with old timber floors under decades of polish, scored by chairs and tables. Those restore beautifully, and a great deal of that work comes to us by recommendation from one committee to the next.
Almost every hall we survey carries markings for at least one sport nobody has played in years, and a good many carry three or four.
Short tennis lines from a scheme that ended a decade ago. Five a side markings for a layout the school no longer uses. A junior court for a year group that is no longer taught. Every one of them adds visual noise and makes the sports you do play harder to read, particularly for a referee.
So relining starts with a conversation about what is actually used rather than what is currently painted. Taking two redundant sets off does more for clarity than any amount of clever colour selection, and it makes the job cheaper rather than dearer because there is less to put back.
On timber the reliable way to remove old line marking is to sand the floor, which takes it off completely. Where a full sand is not warranted we can often over seal instead. Either way, halls look considerably larger and considerably smarter once the clutter has gone.
Price follows the size of the hall, the condition of the existing floor and the specification you choose rather than the postcode. Refurbishing a sound floor costs a fraction of replacing it, which is why we always price that route first. The survey is free and the quotation is fixed in writing.
Yes. Coverage is genuinely national, and where several facilities in one area need work, booking together shares the mobilisation and reduces the cost for each of them.
Compressed wood-composite blocks laid in a brick-like pattern, common in halls built from the 1950s to the 1980s. It cannot be sanded like timber and needs a specialist coating system instead.
We have, as far as Saudi Arabia. International projects are planned as complete programmes with everything agreed and priced in advance.
We can provide the specification detail and firm costings that Condition Improvement Fund and Sport England style applications require, and our survey reports are written with that use in mind.
Yes, in advance and specific to the job rather than a generic template. We also supply COSHH sheets for every product, insurance certificates and DBS details for staff on school sites.
Photographs of the room and of anything specific that worries you, approximate dimensions or the number of badminton courts, the age of the floor if known, and when the room could realistically be closed.
Yes. We survey the slab for level and moisture first, install mitigation where readings require it, and specify the system to the actual timetable of the hall rather than to a standard answer.
A typical hall takes one to two weeks from first machine to final coat, depending on size, how much board repair is needed and how many coats the seal requires. You get a day by day programme before we start.
A failed pad, cracked batten or tired cradle beneath the boards. It is a structural problem, and sanding the surface will not change how the floor feels. We lift the boards locally and replace the failed components.
Usually because the expansion gaps at the perimeter have closed or been blocked, or because moisture is coming up through the slab. Both need diagnosing before refinishing, or the cause simply repeats.
Book a free survey of your floor in Somerset and we will tell you honestly what it needs, what it will cost and how quickly it can happen. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.