I know that lining up images with ads is not allowed, but how about this? Is this ok with adsense tos? and post text is beneath the image and ad.
Yep, they're allowed... carry on.. many arcade sites follow the same pattern, I used to follow the same pattern and it really works if you've high volume of visitors... but also place ads between content as they produce the highest clicks
I don't know how the adsense team is going to interpret this. Take for example, I'm a visitor at your site. I've searched through the content and find that the bathroom design is very nice. I wanted to find out more about what I see on the pic and thus decided to click the link beside the image which I think should lead me to the website doing that particular design. So could this be interpreted as violation of TOS since I got myself confused to relate the ad link and the pic? Somehow, I think this is a borderline case.
That i believe is fine. I think that if there were 3 separate thumbnail nail images made to look like part of the that would be against their rules.