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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Wiltshire and across the UK. The county borders our home patch, which means fast surveys, easy follow-ups and no travel loaded into the price.
We are specialists rather than generalists, which after nearly forty years means a depth of knowledge on sports and commercial timber floors that a general contractor cannot match. Every stage is completed in-house. We do not quote for domestic work; Ryan’s Restorations handles that side.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Most flooring work is planned months ahead, but occasionally a floor becomes an immediate concern: a leak, sudden slipperiness, or damage that makes a hall unusable before an event.
Being close by means we can usually inspect within days, advise on whether the space is safe to use, and carry out temporary or permanent remedial work quickly. A pendulum slip test gives an objective answer where safety is genuinely in question.
Facilities running from early morning to late evening, every day, wear floors at a rate that surprises people. Seals break down faster, markings fade sooner, and the maintenance interval that suits a school hall is simply wrong.
We specify for actual usage hours: harder-wearing finishes, build-ups chosen for durability, and a maintenance schedule matched to the real timetable. It costs a little more initially and considerably less across the floor’s life.
Most of our work comes from facilities we have looked after before. That continuity matters practically: we know what is under the floor, what was done last time, which products were used and when the next intervention is due.
It removes the guesswork that makes a first visit more expensive, and it means recommendations are based on the floor’s actual history rather than a snapshot.
The sports hall floor at De Wint School had reached the end of its seal: grey through the middle, markings closer to guesswork than instruction, and a surface that felt slippery however often it was cleaned.
We sanded it back to clean timber, repaired what needed repairing, resealed and re-marked. The hall reopened with a deep, glossy finish that reads as newly installed, delivered inside a planned holiday window.
~ 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
Basketball wears a floor in two rectangles. The keys take every rebound, post move and landing, and the finish there can be through to bare timber while the rest of the court still looks respectable.
We mark to current FIBA dimensions: a 28 by 15 metre court with the three point line at 6.75 metres from the centre of the basket, reducing to 6.6 metres in the corners. The restricted area is a rectangle with a no charge semi circle, not the trapezoid still found in many older halls, which is usually the giveaway that a court has not been set out properly in decades.
Sole marking is the other characteristic problem. Basketball shoes grip, and that grip transfers rubber across the whole surface. On a well sealed floor it cleans off. Where the seal has gone thin it works into open grain and stops coming out.
A coloured key or a crest at centre court is applied between coats so it wears with the floor rather than scuffing off, and it costs least while the floor is already open.
Dance floors have requirements that pull against those of a sports hall, and specifying one as though it were the other produces a room nobody is happy with.
Grip is the first difference. Dancers need a surface that allows controlled slide, particularly for turns, while still being safe to land on. A finish specified purely for basketball grip will be too grabby, and injuries follow from a foot that stops when the body does not.
Resilience is the second. Dance involves repeated jumping and landing, often in the same spot, and a sprung floor is not a luxury in a studio used seriously. Where a studio sits above other rooms, that same resilience needs to work acoustically as well.
Surface choice varies with the discipline. Ballet and contemporary generally want a vinyl performance surface over a sprung base. Tap and musical theatre want timber. Multi purpose studios need a compromise, and it is worth being honest about which discipline gets priority rather than pretending one floor suits everything equally.
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.
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.
Wiltshire is close to our base, and the work divides between school sport, leisure facilities, military and club facilities and a large rural stock of village and church halls.
School and academy halls are the largest group. The recurring issue is halls that have gone well over a decade without a proper refinish, where the seal has worn through in the traffic lanes and dirt is now sitting in open timber. Left much longer, the staining goes deep enough that sanding will not fully remove it.
Leisure and community sports centres follow, where booking income means the work usually happens overnight or across an agreed quiet week.
Village halls and church halls make up a substantial share, and the county has a great many. We worked on St Katherine Hall, which is a good illustration of the type: a well loved, well worn floor carrying badminton one evening and a community event the next, restored rather than replaced and set for another few decades.
Being local, we can survey quickly and often fit smaller jobs around larger programmes.
St Katherine Hall is our closest comparable project for Wiltshire, and it is the one most local hall committees find useful.
It had the kind of well loved, well worn floor that carries badminton one evening and a community event the next. Decades of accumulated polish sat over the timber, and chair and table legs had scored the whole area from furniture going out and back several times a week.
The polish had to be removed chemically before any sanding could begin, because it clogs abrasives, and that is the step most often missed in cheaper quotations. Underneath was a floor with plenty of board depth left. It was sanded back, damaged boards were replaced, gaps were filled with resin mixed with the floor own sanding dust so the colour matched, and it was resealed with a finish chosen for mixed use rather than pure sport.
The hall is now set for another few decades of everything it is asked to do, at a fraction of what replacement would have cost.
The most common mistake in court relining is tracing what is already on the floor. It repeats old errors and it keeps sports on the hall that nobody plays any more.
We set out from current governing body dimensions using laser and tape, not from the existing paint. Courts that have been remarked by copying the previous set drift over the years, and a surprising number of halls turn out to have netball thirds that are not equal or three point arcs that are not true. If your courts have always felt slightly wrong, that is usually why.
Every dimension is checked before a drop of paint goes down, and the two ends of a court are compared so the layout is symmetrical rather than merely plausible.
On timber the lines go on between coats of seal, which puts the paint under the final lacquer where trainers, trolleys and scrubber driers cannot reach it. That single detail is the difference between line marking that lasts the life of the finish and line marking that starts lifting within a season.
The honest answer is that we cannot know until we have measured. What we can say is that we price the least expensive effective option as well as the full one, so the decision is yours rather than ours, and that the figure we give you is the figure you pay.
We do, and the wider region with it. Work further from our base is organised as a single concentrated programme so nothing is left unfinished awaiting a return trip, and travel is included in the quoted price.
Yes, including cradle, sports batten, pad and board and duo batten systems, specified against the sports being played and the build height available.
Usually within a couple of weeks, and sooner where a floor has become a safety concern. The survey is free and takes under an hour for most halls.
Yes, where replacement is genuinely necessary. Strip-out, disposal and sub-floor preparation are all included in the quotation rather than added later.
A well maintained hall wants a light 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 permanently.
Yes, and for multi site clients it usually should be. We build rolling programmes that spread the spend and take each hall out of use at the quietest point in its own calendar.
Surface marks and worn lacquer come out easily. Deep water staining and anything soaked into open timber may remain faintly visible, and we will tell you honestly at survey what to expect.
Yes. We survey, take moisture readings, measure the remaining board depth and look at the structure, then quote a fixed sum broken down by element. There is no charge and no obligation.
Regularly. We tender for frameworks, price on schedules of rates, and provide the full procurement documentation set including insurances, quality procedures and safeguarding arrangements.
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.
Book a free survey of your floor in Wiltshire 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.