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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Warwickshire and across the UK. We work on both long-established school halls and modern academy facilities, which demand quite different approaches.
Trading since 1987 and family-owned throughout, we handle indoor sports and commercial timber floors from first survey to long-term aftercare, with our own crew and equipment on site at every stage. Domestic and residential projects are the province of 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
An older hall floor can usually meet modern expectations, provided it has not been over-sanded in the past. Age is rarely the limiting factor; previous treatment usually is.
We measure what remains, restore rather than replace where the timber is sound, and finish to a standard that satisfies current slip resistance and performance expectations. Where a floor genuinely cannot meet them we say so and explain what replacement would involve.
The cheapest floor to buy is frequently the most expensive to own. A budget system that cannot be refinished has to be replaced outright when it wears; a quality timber floor can be sanded and resealed repeatedly across decades.
We set out the realistic lifecycle cost of each option, including maintenance intervals and the number of refinishing cycles available, so the decision is made on total cost rather than the number at the bottom of the quote.
Restoring a floor rather than replacing it avoids a skip full of perfectly serviceable timber and the carbon embedded in its replacement. It is the single most sustainable option available in this trade, and it also happens to be the cheapest.
Where replacement is genuinely necessary we manage strip-out and disposal responsibly, and specify systems with realistic service lives rather than whichever product carries the best margin.
Not every floor we save sits in a sports centre. St Katherine’s had the kind of well-loved, well-worn hall floor that carries badminton one evening and a community event the next, and the committee wanted it rescued rather than replaced.
We restored it completely. The hall is now set for another few decades of everything it is asked to do.
~ 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
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.
Timber floors move with the humidity of the building around them, and a great many problems blamed on workmanship are actually a building management issue.
Gaps that open every winter and close every summer are the classic pattern. Heating dries the air, the boards give up moisture and shrink, and the gaps appear. Come summer the moisture returns and they close. That is normal behaviour rather than a fault, though it can be reduced by keeping the building within a more stable range.
The problems start at the extremes. Very dry heated air over a long winter can shrink boards enough to split them or pull them off their fixings. Very damp conditions, particularly in an unheated hall that is suddenly used intensively, cause expansion, and where the perimeter gaps have been closed by later flooring or skirting the floor has nowhere to go and lifts in the middle.
Running ventilation after use, rather than only during it, makes a measurable difference in halls that get hot and humid.
The real saving in looking after a sports floor is not in the refurbishment, it is in avoiding one.
A floor that receives a light screen and recoat every two to three years may never need another full sand. A floor left until the seal has worn through to bare timber will need a full refinish, and will have lost some of its remaining wear layer permanently in the meantime. Over the life of a building that difference is substantial.
A planned programme means scheduled visits rather than reactive calls: deep cleaning, screen and recoat when it is due, minor board repairs, remarking as lines wear, and an annual written condition inspection.
The inspection is the part clients tell us they value most, because it turns an unpredictable risk into a short report with a clear recommendation and a rough cost. That is something that can be put in front of a board or a governing body, and it is a great deal better than finding out in July that a hall will not open in September.
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.
Warwickshire gives us a mix of independent and grammar school sport, academy trust estates, leisure facilities and a substantial rural stock.
Independent and grammar school halls tend to be maintained on a proper cycle and come to us for preventative screen and recoat work, which is the cheapest way to run a sports floor and the reason those floors last decades.
Academy and state school halls are the larger group by number and more often arrive overdue, with the finish worn through in the traffic lanes and markings that have drifted across successive remarks.
We completed the refinish at Aston University nearby, and it is a fair illustration of how we handle a busy facility with no long shutdown: survey properly, plan to the window, staff it to finish inside, and hand back on the agreed date.
Village halls, church halls and club buildings make up the rest, and those old timber floors are usually in far better condition than they look under decades of polish.
Aston University is our closest comparable project for Warwickshire and the wider West Midlands, and it illustrates the constraint most facilities here recognise.
The sports hall had reached the point where the finish had worn through across the main traffic routes and the timber underneath was taking damage directly. The markings had faded to the point where several sports were difficult to officiate, and the hall was heavily booked by both the university and external hirers.
The complication was the programme. A university sports hall has no long summer shutdown, because conferences and external bookings fill the gap. We worked to a tightly defined window and staffed it accordingly.
The floor was sanded back to bare timber, damaged boards were cut out and replaced, and the hall was resealed with a two pack polyurethane. Markings were set out fresh from current governing body dimensions rather than copied, and several redundant sets were dropped. The floor handed back on the agreed date.
Court relining is one of the cheapest interventions available to a facility and often the one that makes the most visible difference for the money.
Price is driven by the number of courts, whether the line marking is going down inside a reseal or as a standalone visit, and how much redundant marking has to be dealt with first. Removing three sets of lines nobody uses makes the job cheaper, not dearer.
On timing, a standalone reline of a multi sport hall is typically two to three days including cure time. A full recolour of a synthetic floor takes four to six days depending on coats and drying conditions.
The hall has to be empty throughout and stay empty while coatings cure. Foot traffic is normally possible around twenty four hours after the final coat and full use at seventy two. Walking on a floor too early is the single most common cause of a marking job needing touching up, and it is entirely avoidable.
We work holidays, weekends and overnight as a matter of routine.
Size, condition and specification set the price. We survey free of charge, take moisture readings and measure remaining board depth, then quote a fixed sum with the scope itemised. If a cheaper approach will genuinely work, that is what we will recommend.
The whole area and its neighbouring counties. We have worked the length of the UK since 1987, and remote projects are simply planned more thoroughly rather than priced at a premium.
The European standard for indoor sports surfaces. It sets out how shock absorption, vertical deformation, ball bounce and friction are measured, and what an indoor sports floor should achieve.
We can give indicative guidance from photographs and hall dimensions, which is often enough to plan a budget. A firm fixed price needs a site survey, which is free.
Solid and engineered timber from Junckers, Boen and Havwoods, plus vinyl, polyurethane and lino, and specialist coating systems for Granwood and composite block floors.
Yes. We carry out pendulum slip resistance testing and provide the certificate, which is worth having on file for insurers, governing bodies and facilities audits.
Yes. We deep clean, reseal, remark and fully recoat synthetic sports surfaces, and a PU floor recoated in a fresh colour with new markings looks like a new installation for a fraction of the cost.
Almost always polish or the wrong cleaning product building up, or a seal worn smooth in the traffic lanes. Both are fixable, and both should be dealt with before somebody is injured.
An area elastic floor deflects across a wide area when loaded, which suits ball sports. A point elastic floor deflects only where loaded, which suits fitness and dance. Combined systems provide both.
It can if it is run too hot or brought up too quickly, which dries the boards and opens gaps. The system needs proper commissioning and controlled surface temperatures, and the timber needs to be specified as suitable.
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.
Book a free survey of your floor in Warwickshire 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.