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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Tyne and Wear and across the UK. A concentration of universities, leisure trusts and clubs across a compact area makes programmed work efficient here.
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 busy public sports hall sees a volume and variety of use no school hall matches, and its floor ages accordingly. Seals break down faster, markings fade sooner, and the maintenance interval that suits an education setting is simply wrong.
We specify against actual usage hours rather than building type: harder-wearing finishes, build-ups chosen for durability, and maintenance scheduled to the real timetable.
Closing a leisure hall for a week is rarely acceptable, so most work in this sector is phased. A floor can be divided into sections with one area worked while the rest stays in use, or taken overnight across a series of shifts.
Both need careful planning around curing times, and both cost slightly more than a straight closure. They almost always cost less than the bookings a closure would lose.
Operators running several centres frequently cannot say when each floor was last treated or what was used. That makes every decision harder than it needs to be and every quotation less accurate.
We maintain records of what was done, when and with which products, and provide them as part of a maintenance arrangement. It removes guesswork from future work and gives incoming staff a starting point.
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 genuinely 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
Most enquiries reach us as a description of a symptom, and there are a few things that let us give a genuinely useful reply rather than a holding one.
Photographs are the most valuable. Two or three of the whole room, and two or three close up of whatever is worrying you, tell us more than several paragraphs. If there is a worn patch, a stain, a lifting board or a dead spot, photograph that specifically.
Approximate dimensions, or just the number of badminton courts, gives us the area. The rough age of the floor and whether anybody knows what is underneath helps. If you have any record of previous work, even a decade old invoice, that is genuinely useful.
Then tell us what the room is used for and when it could realistically be closed. Those two facts shape the recommendation as much as the condition does.
From that we can usually give an informed steer and a budget range before arranging a survey.
Not every tired floor needs taking back to bare timber, and knowing the difference saves facilities a great deal of money.
A screen and recoat is a light abrasion of the existing finish followed by a fresh top coat. It restores grip and appearance, it takes a fraction of the time, and it costs a fraction of the price. It works when the seal is worn but still intact across the floor.
A full sand removes everything back to bare timber and rebuilds the finish from scratch. It is the right answer when the lacquer has worn through in the traffic lanes and dirt is sitting in open grain, when there are repairs to make, or when the markings need setting out fresh.
As a rule of thumb, a well maintained hall wants a screen and recoat every two to three years and a full sand roughly every ten. Sticking to that keeps the boards alive far longer, because every full sand removes timber you cannot replace. A floor refinished every three years will run out of wear layer decades early.
Slip resistance is the one performance characteristic of a sports floor that can be measured objectively, and it is worth having the number rather than an assurance.
The pendulum test is the recognised method in the United Kingdom. A weighted arm with a rubber slider swings across the surface and the resistance is recorded, giving a pendulum test value. Sports surfaces are expected to sit within a defined range: too low and players slip, too high and the shoe binds, which brings its own injury risk.
We carry out testing on floors we have worked on and on floors we have not, and we provide the certificate. It is worth having in three situations in particular. After a refinish, so you can demonstrate the floor was handed over correctly. Where a floor has been reported as slippery, so you know whether it genuinely is. And where an insurer, a governing body or a facilities audit has asked for evidence.
Where a test comes back low, the cause is usually polish build up or a worn seal, and both are fixable.
The last two days of a floor project decide how it is remembered, so we treat handover as part of the work rather than the end of it.
Once the final coat is down the room is signed and, where necessary, locked. Footprints in a curing seal do not polish out, and equipment put back a day early leaves permanent marks. This is the single most common cause of a job needing touching up and it is entirely preventable.
When the cure time is complete we return the room to use ourselves rather than leaving it to the site team. Socket covers go back at the correct level, fittings are refitted, and the equipment comes back in an order that does not drag across fresh finish.
You then receive the handover pack: product data sheets, cure times in writing, aftercare guidance, photographs of the completed work and, where requested, the pendulum slip resistance certificate. It goes into the facilities file as a complete record.
Tyne and Wear brings us university and college sport, council leisure facilities and a substantial number of school and academy sports halls.
University facilities run year round, with summer conference and external use filling what would be a shutdown elsewhere, so the working windows are narrow, fixed and planned well in advance.
Academy and school halls are the largest group by number. Many are from the nineteen sixties and seventies with sprung timber floors that are structurally sound but have gone too long between refinishes. A proper survey usually finds considerably more life left in them than the school has been told, and restoration is almost always better value than replacement.
Leisure centres follow, where the priority is keeping the building trading and most of the work is done overnight.
The older school and church halls in the region frequently have Granwood floors, which need a specialist approach rather than timber sanding. Most of the Granwood we are asked to look at is well worth restoring.
Enquiries across Tyne and Wear reflect a building stock weighted towards post war schools and older community buildings.
The most frequent is a sprung floor that has lost its response in patches. Dead spots mean a failed pad, cracked batten or tired cradle beneath the boards, and refinishing the surface will not change how that area feels. The repair is local rather than wholesale.
The second is Granwood, which appears regularly here and is often condemned when it should not be. Sound blocks and an intact bed mean restoration is viable, at a fraction of the cost of a replacement that would also involve lifting a bitumen bed.
The third is floors that have been coated repeatedly without ever being taken back. Those layers eventually cloud, peel at the edges and lift in sheets, and another coat over the top simply postpones the problem.
It varies with the state of the floor more than anything else. A hall needing only a clean and reline costs very little; one needing full sanding, repairs and resealing costs more but still far less than replacement. We will tell you honestly which category yours is in.
Yes, along with the surrounding area. Projects are planned as complete visits with everything agreed before we travel, so distance affects our logistics rather than your price or the quality of the finish.
Our machinery runs with dust extraction throughout and we manage containment so the rest of the building keeps operating. It is a practical requirement in occupied premises, not a courtesy.
A single-court hall is typically four to five days including sanding, repairs, sealing, marking and curing, which fits inside a school holiday. The programme and a fixed reopening date are confirmed in writing before we start.
Yes. Plans typically cover an annual deep clean from four pounds fifty per square metre, condition inspections, recoating, repairs, relining and slip testing with written reports.
Yes, and for organisations with several floors it is where we usually start. You get a written report per site with photographs, moisture readings, remaining wear layer and a costed priority order.
Yes, and we recommend doing both together. Stages are usually in worse condition than the hall floor, and one visit costs considerably less than two while giving a consistent finish.
The blocks and boards themselves are not the concern, but bitumen adhesive beds used before the mid nineteen eighties can contain it. We treat every bitumen bedded floor as suspect until testing confirms otherwise.
Usually a two pack polyurethane in a satin sheen. It holds slip resistance and appearance under heavy use, and satin hides scuffing and avoids glare under the LED lighting most halls now have.
Yes, and we set out from measured dimensions rather than copying existing lines. Courts remarked by tracing the previous set drift over the years, and many halls turn out to be dimensionally out.
Yes, and it is routine. Split, damaged and water damaged boards are cut out and replaced with matching timber laid to the same grain direction, so the repair disappears once the floor is sanded.
Book a free survey of your floor in Tyne and Wear 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.