Sorry haven't posted this sooner...
I'm not sure why the other two scenerios were so finicky, yet the solution was to simply wrap the mainbody in a divider, the code example is:
index.php -
<body>
<div id="bg_image">
<div id="mainbody">
your site info(html/pictures etc), then ends with...
</div>
</div>
</body>
in template.css file just used the same as previous,
body {
background-image: url(../images/bg.jpg);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
margin-left: 0px;
margin-top: 0px;
}
Thanks!!!