How do I adjust the background of the <ul> element for a large vertical sliding door?

I'm creating a rounded box for a nav list in a sidebar. The issue I'm having is that I've created an extra long partially transparent image to act as the bottom of the sliding door, but no matter which element I set it as the background for- it doesn't seem to want to extend properly over the whole list, starting and stopping at the first link when used as the background for the tag. I've provided the code below:

CSS:

#sidebar{float:left;
        width: 200px;
        text-align: center;
        margin: 0 0 0 0;
        }

    .nav {
    } /*Attempting to display it here leads to evil. As you might expect from the code below*/



    ul.nav {font-family: arial, san serif;

        margin-left:auto;

        margin-right: auto;

        margin-top:0;

        margin-bottom: 0;

        text-align: left ;  

        width: 200px;

        padding: 0;

        height: 1.35em;

        list-style: none;

                background-image:url(headbutt2.png); /*Here, it only exists as background for the first link*/
            background-repeat:none;
        background-position:top;


        }

    #navwid{background-image:url(head2.png); /*This is the extra long image. Here, it does not display at all*/

background-repeat:none;
        background-position:bottom;}



ul.nav li {

    overflow: hidden;

    }



ul.nav a {

    text-align: center;

    font-weight: bold;

    font-size: 1em;

    padding: 0 1em 0 1em;

    height: 1.35em;

    text-decoration: none;

    color: black;

    }

.sidetop {margin:0 auto 0 auto;
    background-image:url(head3.png); /*Caption background. Displays fine with no issues.*/
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    display:block;
    width:200px;}

HTML:

 <div id=sidebar>
    <div class="navwid">
 <!--Nav widget container-->
        <div class="sidetop">
 <!--Caption-->
        </div>      
        <div class="nav">


            <ul class="nav">

            <li><a href="#" class="nav">Dummylink</a></li>
            <li><a href="#" class="nav">Dummylink</a></li>

            <li><a href="#" class="nav">Dummylink</a></li>

            <li><a href="#" class="nav">Dummylink</a></li>

            <li><a href="#" class="nav">Dummylink</a></li> 
            <li><a href="#" class="nav">Dummylink</a></li></ul>

        </div> <!--nav end-->


    </div><!--navwid end-->
</div> <!--sidebar end-->

The answer to the question, as I just realized, lies in my setting a height of 1.35em to the ul tag. It was sitting there in front of me the whole time while I spent a few hours bashing away at the keyboard. Just goes to show you can't overlook the small stuff when things get buggy.