Hi Iggie. If I may. If the use of Back Yard Bob, reaches a point where the professional shop is forced to cut back on tooling, training, and maybe even personnel to the point that say they are no longer equipped to deal with your transmission question (which is actually already happening, one MUST have the $9000.00 factory scan tool for ONLY Chrysler to operate at the level required) then what is anyone going to do, with or without the financial resources? Back Yard Bob would never go anywhere near this level of an investment, we can only do it when we price correctly, and are fully utilized by our customers. There is a difference between price and cost. You can get a cheap price by going around us, but how do you really measure the cost of doing that? I had a customer who took her Honda Odyssey to a back yard bob to have a timing belt job done. She came back here a month later thinking she had a transmission problem, that he discovered right after doing the belt. The transmission was fine, he missed the timing marks when he did the belt. What if she totally lost the chance to ever bring her car back here because we weren't doing enough business to keep our doors open? Don't be too sure there will always be someone else, the cars got way too complicated in too short of a time. The tools are not being widely purchased and very few technicians are attending sufficient training to keep up with today's technology. The best part, is its all because most shops are actually priced to low already to afford those expenses. Now with many other people losing their jobs, and thinking they are capable of, and attempting to work at home and grab some/most of the easier work, we are getting hit with all kinds of problems when we are the second person in, (sometimes the third) with cars that have lots of parts thrown at them, that they easily may not have needed. In many cases, if someone else does a job like that timing belt in the back yard, we are faced with either turning the customer away, or completely re-doing the repair. You see, once we touch it, we are expected to stand behind the repair, fully. Meanwhile Back Yard Bob can sit back and still say he did everything right, and act like we don't know what we are doing. The Honda owner I referred to, once the car was diagnosed, was handed her keys and sent back to the person that did the work. As far as we are concerned, she does not ever have to come back. If her Back Yard Bob can't handle everything her car needs, she can take it to the nearest dealer, a sixty mile round trip. That's a real cost associated to the cheap price she got. BTW, like that Chrysler tool, I'm the only independent that has the Honda Factory tool, I won't bother going into detail right here what that means that I and the dealer can do, that no other shop, or especially anyone working at home in their garage cannot. Seriously it would take way too much time to try and look it all up and type it out. BTW, I know it sounds arrogant to turn her away, but its more about preserving the shop in one of the toughest business climates ever. We are all in, customers that don't understand that can't help us, and for the sake of the customers that do understand we have to make choices. "Nothing personal, its just business"

An option occured to me,if you don't want to go with the expense of retiling, and don't care for it anyway, what if you plastered the lower part of the wall in a somewaht rougher texture, sort of that Venetian plaster look? It can be thicker than the upper smooth section, you would put in some kind of chair rail divider between the 2 sections. Not actual chair rail that they sell labeled as such, that wouldn't be quite fitting in this case. You'd need to look around for some kind of other trim. Maybe even something with a narrow ledge, not quite as wide as plate rail, since the room is so narrow you'd probably be bumping into it, but something similar.

I'll respond to a bunch of things at once here: The general consensus from you guys seems to be that we should have a wiping technique chat and have those flushable wipes. That was what I was leaning towards as well. Thank you to whoever it was that mentioned making sure they say "flushable". We don't have him enough to be on constant potty patrol, monitoring his progress for several weeks straight, so whatever we do about this has to fit the amount we have him and I think that approach is worth a shot. So, now the hard part of the problem: What do I do about getting BF to talk with him? BF is a good dad, but he's not comfortable with that sort of things and he's not all that patient. So I know he will feel pressured into giving this tutorial, that he will hate it, and I suspect he will come off as grouchy during it, rather than matter-of-fact. I was thinking of waiting to bring it up again until there is another pair of excessively poopy underwear, but I think I would rather be proactive and prevent future messes. Should I ask him what he will say to A__, and suggest he do a practice chat to me? (He'll think that's totally lame, but it might make him more comfortable with A__) Any suggestions? I have no clue how to encourage my BF on talking to his son about wiping properly and I need some ideas. Or should I just do it myself next time A__ is here? Tell BF that I'm buying wipes and ask if he wants to talk to A__ about it, or if I should (I'm nearly certain he will say he doesn't want to). Then tell A__ "Hey, I bought these for you, because you said that even though you try your best, you have trouble wiping well. [Insert calm and matter-of-fact wiping tutorial here] and then if the paper is still dirty when you do the 'check' at the end, use one of these, just like you did with the paper, but they're wet, so they'll help. Check again, and if it's still dirty, use one more. Flush the wipes with everything else and wash your hands with soap. If you're still dirty, you can have a quick shower - I know you prefer baths, but this would just be a quick shower so you can soap up your bum, and you wouldn't even have to get your face or hair wet. I'll ask you tomorrow night if the wipes made it easier for you, and if they did, Dad or I will tell Mom that you liked them and that you'd like them at her house too."

Thank you for your advice! I'm from the Philippines. We have general building laws, but I'm not aware of any rules regarding toilet clearance. Btw, we plan to put a curved shower rod and curtain since we're pretty aware of the space problem. My husband insists on a bathroom for every bedroom so we had to compromise with the bathroom space. The floor tile is called "Inverary Rojo" by Plaza tiles. It's a Spanish brand, I think. For the other bathroom, we're using "Inverary Gris", which is a blue and white version. Your design advice is great! Thank you everyone! It never occurred to me to just "go with the flow" and just add decor that mirrors the Terra cotta and teal colors. I think that would really improve things. I'll also have to look into changing the color of the grout to match the mosaic tiles. That was my initial idea as well.