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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Suffolk and across the UK. Our work spans school halls that serve several functions daily and leisure facilities running extended timetables.
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
A hall that hosts sport, dining, assemblies, exams and community lettings cannot be specified as though it only hosts sport. Furniture, not activity, causes most of the damage we repair.
The honest approach is to choose a finish tough enough for chairs, tables and staging while still delivering acceptable grip and shock absorption for activity, and to be explicit about the compromise rather than pretending there is not one. We will tell you what you gain and what you give up.
There is a window in the life of every seal where a recoat costs very little and buys several years. Miss it and the lacquer breaks through, the timber starts taking wear directly, and the only option left is a full sand.
Recognising that window is what an annual inspection is for. A light abrasion and fresh coats of seal take a couple of days and a fraction of the cost, and it is the single most effective way to keep a floor out of the sanding cycle.
Wear hides in plain sight. A seal can look intact while it is failing underfoot, moisture can build beneath boards for months before anything shows, and markings drift out of specification without anyone noticing.
An annual inspection catches all of it while the remedy is still small, and produces a written record that supports both budget planning and duty-of-care files. Paired with a deep clean and slip test in one visit, it costs very little.
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 price without a survey is a guess, so every Suffolk quotation starts with an hour in the hall with instruments rather than opinions.
We measure the floor area and the run off to the walls, because the marking layout depends on both. We take moisture readings in the boards and, where there is any doubt, in the slab beneath. We gauge the remaining wear layer at a socket or a threshold to see how many more sands the boards can take. We check for soft spots by walking the grid, look at the perimeter gaps, and note every socket, fitting and old repair.
All of that goes into a written report with photographs, and the quote is built from it line by line. If the survey says a recoat will do, that is what we price.
School halls in Suffolk carry PE, assemblies, exams and lettings on the same floor, which leaves only the holidays for anything that closes the room. We plan around that from the first conversation.
Summer is the natural slot for a full sand, because the six week break covers sanding, repairs, sealing, marking and the full cure with room to spare. Easter suits a smaller hall or a recoat. Half terms are tight, but a screen and recoat fits inside one if we start on the first Saturday and the seal has the week to harden.
The date we agree is the date you get the hall back, with cure time included in the programme rather than added after. If a term start moves or an exam timetable changes, tell us early and we reshuffle around it.
Everyone who works on your floor is employed by us, and every machine on site belongs to us. That is unusual in a trade where the firm you speak to on the phone is often not the firm that turns up.
It matters for three reasons. The crew that surveyed your hall is the crew that sands it, so nothing is lost between a report and a job sheet. The programme holds because we are not waiting on a subcontractor and their diary. And the standard is the same on the last day as the first, because the same people are accountable for both.
For a Suffolk school or club it also means one phone number when something needs sorting after handover, and one warranty covering the timber, the seal and the markings together, held by the people who did the work.
A great many Suffolk school and community halls have a permanent stage at one end, and its floor gets forgotten until a performance is a week away. Stage timber takes scenery being dragged, screws going in and out, and paint that nobody was meant to spill.
We treat a stage as part of the hall floor programme. Old paint and tape residue come off, loose boards are refixed, screw holes are plugged in matching timber, and the surface is sanded flat. The finish is then a choice: some schools want a black matt stage coating for drama, others want sealed natural timber that matches the hall below.
Either way it needs the same cure time as the main floor, and the steps and edges are where wear shows first, so we build those up with extra coats.
Suffolk brings us a largely rural mix, weighted towards school sports halls, community buildings and club facilities rather than large leisure estates.
School halls are the biggest group, and in many Suffolk communities the school hall doubles as the main indoor sports space for the area, taking curriculum sport, club training and community lettings on the same floor. That volume of mixed use wears a finish faster than the timetable alone would suggest, which is why so many arrive overdue.
Village halls and church halls are the second group and the county has a great many. Those timber floors are frequently a century old, buried under decades of polish and scored by chair and table legs, with plenty of board depth left underneath. They restore beautifully for a fraction of what committees usually expect.
Because journeys within the county take a while, we plan work here as continuous blocks and bring everything with us. Where several halls are considering work, sequencing them together brings the cost down for everybody.
Suffolk enquiries are dominated by rural halls, and two projects usually cover what people want to know.
St Katherine Hall is the closest for community buildings. An old timber floor carrying badminton one evening and a community event the next, buried under decades of accumulated polish and scored across the whole area by chairs and tables going out and back several times a week. The polish had to be removed chemically before sanding, and underneath was a floor with plenty of board depth left. It is now set for another few decades of everything it is asked to do.
De Wint School is the better comparison for a school hall that also serves as the area sports facility: curriculum use, club training and lettings on one floor, a seal worn through where the traffic runs, and a fixed term date.
We quote both types by element, so a committee or a business manager can see exactly what each part costs and phase it if the funds require.
Condition sets the price more than size. A hall whose seal is dull but intact needs a screen and recoat, the cheapest outcome. Worn through lanes, repairs and fresh markings move it into a full refurbishment. Both are itemised after a free survey so you compare like with like.
Yes, everywhere in the county and beyond. We treat a distant hall as a single planned visit, arriving with every machine, abrasive and tin of seal needed to finish. Travel sits inside the quoted figure, so a coastal site is priced the same way as any other.
Every machine runs on extraction, and we screen doorways and isolate shared ventilation before the first pass. We vacuum the hall between stages and leave adjacent rooms clean. It is a standard part of the method statement, not an extra you have to request.
Around twenty four hours after the last coat for foot traffic in clean footwear. Allow seventy two hours or more before benches, mats and trampolines return, because the seal keeps hardening below the surface. We put the exact timings in the handover sheet for the product used.
Yes. A site specific risk assessment and method statement, COSHH data for each product, our insurance certificates and DBS numbers for the team are sent before we arrive. Business managers can file the pack without chasing us for anything.
Yes. We paint logos and coloured areas from your artwork between coats of seal so they are locked under the final finish. Doing it during a refinish is the economical moment, as the floor is already prepared and the seal is going on anyway.
Yes. Granwood is a composite block of wood flour and cement in a bitumen bed, so it is not sanded like timber. We rebed loose blocks, prepare the surface carefully and apply a modified epoxy coating with the markings built in. Older bitumen is tested for asbestos first.
Yes. We use the pendulum method at several points across the hall, dry and wet, and issue a certificate. Suffolk schools and clubs usually repeat it each year so the file shows the floor keeping its grip over time, not just at handover.
Arrange a free survey of your hall floor anywhere in Suffolk. We inspect, measure and report in writing, price the least expensive option alongside the full one, and hold the date we agree. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.