Pommy, what's happening? And could you answer the Qs in post #40, please - what type of tops do you have?
I don't think I have ever seen one in a privately owned house, certainly not where they could afford to hire me. Isn't Buckingham Palace a large council house?
It might not be the answer to your problem but we have found a repair trim for the Mason Mitre joint. We got water damage in ours and had been told that we would have to replace our whole work top, because of the sink and hob this meant replacing 3 work tops. Because we found this trim all we had to do was rub down the damaged area and run silicon down the joint and press the trim into place. It was so much simpler and cheaper than replacing all the work tops. I have only found one website that supplies this http://www.masonsmitretrim.co.uk/ hope this helps other people with the same problem we had.
Isn't it a bit odd, we haven't heard from pommychick since Sept 3rd. You would have thought we would have had a comment or two from them. After all they did ask for help from the experts.