A Washington state contractor said his workers remodeling Ted Bundy's childhood home experienced a handful of strange occurrences during their time at the house.
Casey Clopton, the contractor, told The News Tribunethat a plea for help appeared on a window as his crew worked in the basement and heavy furniture mysteriously toppled over.
"I'm not one to believe a lot of this stuff, but this house made me a believer," Clopton told the paper in an interview that ran Monday.
Bundy was born in Vermont. In 1955, when he was 9 years old, his family moved into the Tacoma home.
He grew up to be one of the most notorious serial killers in history. He had been linked to disappearance of an 8-year-old girl when he was 14, but denied killing her. The paper reported there was no evidence he committed any crimes in the home.
David Truong bought https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-bH7dZ-o2Y the house in September with the intention of redoing it and flipping it for a higher price. The News Tribune reported that neither Truong nor the real estate broker knew the house's history.
Clopton said he first visited the home in October and brought his 11-year-old daughter along with him. He said that his daughter got an eerie feeling about the home and started to cry.
"She said she felt weird. She didn't like it there," he said.
When Clopton returned with a few workers the next week, one crew member got the same uncomfortable feeling.
"Periodically, throughout the course of the job, we had weird things keep happening," Clopton said.
He said there was one time they re-entered the house, which had been locked, to find that every cabinet was open. He said one worker spotted the words "Help me" scrawled across a basement window and while the crew was working downstairs they heard a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renovation dresser in the upstairs hallway fall. Cellphone and other electronics would also occasionally get unplugged and immediately die.
Clopton said he started to ask neighbors about the house and learned that the Bundy family had once lived there. Clopton said he called tw o pastors to bless the house and even wrote a Bible verse on the wall.
"Everything in that house fought us, and I was kind of weird about it," he said. "But I go to church and I have God with me."
If you're considering working with a landscape designer, finding the right fit -- and avoiding surprises midway through the project -- is largely about knowing which questions to ask upfront and being familiar with the range of services these professionals provide.
We reached out to four seasoned landscape professionals -- Peter Reader of Peter Reader Landscapes in London, Beth Mullins of Growsgreen http://lawngrasses.com/ Landscape Design in San Francisco, John Algozzini of K&D Landscape Management in Chicago and June Scott of June Scott Design in Southern California -- to get the inside scoop on the range of services available and the 10 essential questions potential clients should ask before hiring a professional for the job.
First, get your ducks in a row. Before reaching out to a professional, write a wish list for your garden remodel, establish your priorities and budget, and decide which parts of the process you'd like to hir e a pro for help. With this on paper, you'll have a clear sense of what you're looking for in a designer before you begin to contact professionals.
10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Landscape Designer
1. What services do you offer? First and foremost, determine what services a landscape designer offers to see if he or she is the right person for your project."The best question a potential client can ask is: 'Are you experienced with the scope of work we want, and can you design and manage it?'" Algozzini says.
Generally speaking, landscape designers fall into one of three categories, depending on the services they offer:
Design only. Some designers specialize only in the design process. This typically includes a site analysis and discussion of a client's needs, a preliminary design, revisions based on your feedback, and a final detailed master plan for your garden. This detailed planting plan and construction document is then handed over to you (or a la ndscape contractor of your choosing) to take it from there.
Design-build. Others offer the design service described above, as well as overseeing plant purchase and all installation. Contractors are needed for permitting and hardscape installation -- sometimes the landscape designer is also a registered contractor, and other times they have landscape contractors on their team or ones to recommend and oversee.
RELATED: Choose From the Best Design-Build Firms
Full service -- design-build and maintenance program. For the highest-touch service, some landscape designers will offer all the above, plus oversee ongoing maintenance of the garden.
2. Can I see examples of your past work? "Consider the style of the designer in relation to the garden you want," Reader says. "If you want a modern, clean-lined city garden, have they designed any before? Or if you are looking for a cottage-style garden, do they have the plant knowledge to deliver?"
Alternatively, if a designer's portfolio doesn't include the particular style you're looking for, check out his or her credentials for evidence of the training to make the vision of your garden a reality. Degrees from accredited landscape design colleges and memberships in professional organizations are both good indicators.
3. Do you offer garden consultations? Some landscape designers will offer one- to two-hour garden consultations. During this meeting, a designer will typically come over to your property, join you for a walk around the garden, listen to what you'd like to accomplish with your remodel and begin to bounce some ideas around for the design.
This is a great opportunity for you to determine whether you have a fit with the designer, and for the designer to see if he or she fits with you as a client. "It is important for a client to determine what role they want to play," Mullins says. "Are they interested in a collaboration, [want to] defer completely to the designer or have a clear idea for their garden and just want someone to implement it?"
Don't expect an initial consult to be free of charge -- it is, after all, two hours of a professional's time -- though some designers will put the consult fee toward the cost of the design if you end up hiring them.
4. What ideas do you have for our garden? After you've shared your wish list and budget with the designer, and the designer has had a chance to view your property, ask what vision the designer has for your landscape. Designers have different mediums of presenting their ideas for your landscape, ranging from a collage-style mood board with inspiration images for plants and hardscape materials to a two-dimensional, to-scale drawing created with a CAD program or by hand.
This is the time to speak up about what you like and dislike in the design or if you see anything that's missing from your wish list -- for example, more space for tool storage, room to grow vegetables or an area with shade. Following this meeting, a designer will draw up a revised design drawing based on your feedback.
5. What is your process? A designer's process depends on the services he or she offers (see question 1). Get to know the process -- and whether you or the designer is responsible for overseeing each step -- from the beginning so that you'll know what to expect once the project is underway. If you're hiring a designer who specializes in design only, ask yourself whether you have the time or experience necessary to oversee the project installation or if the designer has contractors to recommend.
As a responsible client, you also need to be honest with a landscape designer regarding your budget for the project. "Knowing a budget beforehand is crucial," Mullins says. "It doesn't mean that a designer needs to spend the budget but dictates what [he or she] can realistically design for." If a look you like is over your budget, designers often have creative ways to stretch your budget and give you the best garden for your space.
6. What is the estimated cost? Clear communication regarding the estimated cost of the project and your budget is essential. Ask your designer for a range of cost for both the design and the installation. Most installation estimates are drawn up by a contractor based on the cost per square foot of installing areas of hardscape outlined on th e plan for the yard.
Scott shares another key question to ask your designer: "How are changes in scope handled during the design and installation process?" Given that unanticipated design changes often come up midproject, it's important to be clear on whether a designer will charge additional fees for the time it takes to change the design plan or installation.
7. Are there any ways to reduce cost? Pathways, patios, retaining walls and decks are generally more expensive than planted garden areas, so the more hardscape there is in the design, the more it's likely going to cost to install. Plus, the materials used for hardscape can vary widely for both the product and the installation.
It's best to have a conversation with a designer when you are discussing the initial plan about ways to reduce the cost of the landscape to stay on budget. The designer will have ideas about where you can save money without compromising style, and what elements are worth a splurge.< br> 8. How long will installation take? The time it takes to design and install a landscape depends on a number of factors: size and scope of the project, availability of contractors and other installation specialists, ordering and delivery times for materials and plants, dry weather for laying hardscape, and unexpected setbacks during installation. Instead of asking a landscape designer to have the installation done by a certain date, ask for an estimated range for the project to be Sprinkler System completed.
As eager as you may be to enjoy your new landscape, keep in mind that skilled installation of hardscape and careful planting takes time. "While landscaping on TV is inspirational and great entertainment, the actual site work rarely has a team of 24 [people] working around the clock," Algozzini says. "High-quality work is both art and science, and takes time to install."
RELATED: How to Work With a Land scape Professional
9. When will the garden grow in? The time it takes for a garden to grow in depends on the scope of the design, what types of plants are proposed and how mature the plants are when they're planted. A smaller area with ornamental grasses and perennials can grow in within a single season, but larger and more complex designs with trees and large shrubs can take years to reach maturity. Ask your designer which plants make sense to splurge for semimature specimens (like focal-point trees or shrubs needed for screening) and which plants can be purchased small and fill in quickly (like most ground covers, vegetables and ornamental grasses).
10. How much maintenance will it take to keep the garden looking good? Different styles of gardens and plants require very different levels of care. Be upfront with your landscape Sprinkler System Installation Fort Worth designer about how much maintenance you are willing to commit -- either your own time or that of a hired gardener -- going forward. Once you've invested in hiring a landscape designer and installing a garden, you'll want to keep your landscape alive and flourishing for years to come. Ask your landscape designer if he or she has recommended maintenance gardeners or specialists to take care of the garden going forward.
If you are tired of watering your lawn manually and want a nicely manicure lawn, a sprinkler system is worth the investment. Here are some pros and cons to help you make the decision.
PROS of installing a sprinkler system
- A sprinkler system will take care of watering of lawn for you. That means no manual labor and time saved where you could do more enjoyable activities.
- Though you need to invest some money up front. Over the long run a sprinkler system will pay for itself by eliminating over watering. Not to mention the personal time you save for other activities.
CONS of installing a sprinkler system
- As mentioned earlier, an investment must be made initially but can be easily recouped with the water conserved and time used for other activities.
- Depending on the type of lawn sprinkler system you will install, you may need to dig up part of your lawn. This mean unsightly soil laying around but of course this is only temporary.
- A sprinkler system can be a DIY project but it is highly advisable to get a
professional to do the job properly.
There you have it, some pros and cons in installing a sprinkler system. Decide for yourself if the advantages of a sprinkler system outweigh the disadvantages.
Richard Serra, Inside Out, 2013, Weatherproof steel 158 x 982 x 482 1/2 inches, Shot before delivery to this exhibition venue: Richard Serra/New Sculpture, Gagosian Gallery, West 21st Street NY, NY, October 26- February 8, 2014
Photo by Lorenz Kienzle
I can't think of a better way to open myself up to the slings and arrows of rebuke than making a top ten list like this. But someone did ask me to list the five best 2013 exhibits off the top of my head. I took them up on that and then added five more. If memorability is in fact, as Henry Geldzahler claimed, a good measure of aesthetic goodness, then perhaps this list is of some worth. So here goes...my top ten contemporary art exhibits in 2013. No ranking is intended in this list beyond just making the cut. My servitude to pop culture conv ention only goes so far.
1. Carnegie International Exhibition
Nicole Eisenman Survey in the Hall of Sculpture
Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PN
Carnegie Museum October 5, 2013 - March 16, 2014
Nicole Eisenman, The Sunday Night Dinner, 2009 42 x 51 in. oil on canvas, Collection of Arlene Shechet and Mark Epstein, Courtesy Carnegie Museum
The highlight of this well-conceived iteration of the Carnegie International is the survey of Nicole Eisenman's work from the past two decades. She was the winner of this year's Carnegie Prize. Work such as The Sunday Night Dinner has placed Eisenman as one of the most important 21st century expressionists who cast back to the roots of expressionism without evoking the weaknesses of 1980's Neo-expressionism.
To see more paintings :
http://ci13.cmoa.org/artists/nicole-eisenman
2. James Turrell
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
June 21-September 25, 2013
James Turrell, Aten Reign, 2013, Daylight and LED light, dimensions variable, installation cycles through the color spectrum in an hour. James Turrell
Installation view: James Turrell, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,
Photo: David Heald Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York
Given a fair chance, James Turrell's gigantic installation in the Guggenheim rotunda had power to invoke sublime feeling in a communal experience. His Aten Reign ran the full height of the rotunda: five huge concentric orbs of gradated light that enclosed the ocular skylight. In hourly cycles the lights ran the full ran ge of spectral hues as daylight streamed down through the artificial rings of light. Sure, if we just look out into space we can set our limited intellects out on a head-on crash with the infinite and the incomprehensible. But how often do we do that? A little more spectacle (like Aten Reign) added to the familiar spectacular can jar us into this good-for-the-soul state. Aten Reign was the astonishing appetizer that casts back to the sublime proposed by Kant -- one that has transcendence. This is not the empty kitsch/hubris spectacle set up to fail and call itself into question. So bring on the main course. The world still awaits Turrell's Rodin Crater.
See video here: http://www.guggenheim.org/turrell
3. Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Olentoja (Creatures)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College,
Wellesley, MA
Exhibition run: Sep 18 - Jan 5, 2014
Eija-Liisa Ahtila,The House, 2002, 14 min DVD installation for 3 projections with sound
Copyright Crystal Eye Ltd, Helsinki, Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris
Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila has been a figure in the vanguard movement re-imagining film art into multiple screen pieces with cinematic production values. This exhibition of her key works included House (2002), one of the best pieces in the movement. This work demonstrates that beauty and transcendence do not have to be put into the satirical air quotes of postmodernism to be critically and aesthetically relevant.
Click here for the full review.
4. Laura McPhee: River of No Return
Kemper Contemporary Museum of ART,
Kansas City, MO.
May 17-September 22, 2013
Laura McPhee, Mattie with a Northern Red-Shafted Flicker, Laverty Ranch, Idaho, May, 2005, chromogenic print, 96 x 72 inches, Collection of the Alturas Foundation and courtesy of Carroll and Sons, Boston Laura McPhee
The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art again showed its extraordinarily good judgment in featuring the work of Laura McPhee. She is a final holdout in the line of great large format photographers using the 8 by 10 camera and pulling prints with traditional chromogenic chemistry. River of No Return featured twenty-three beautiful mural sized (6 by 8 feet) prints that were photographed over several years in the ranch land and wilderness of central Idaho. An exceptional inclusion, Mattie with a Northern Red-Shafted Flicker, is a fresh a nd relevant iconic image that is resolute and easy to love, even without backstory. Here the clich of winged beauty ceases to be clich in the hands of Mcphee.
Click here for the full review.
5. Nicolas Consuegra
Gallery Booth for La Central Gallery, Bogota, Columbia
Miami Beach Art Basel
Dec 4-8, 2013
Nicolas Consuegra, The Water That You Touch is the Last of What has Passed and the First of That Which Comes, 2013, 15 channel video, Courtesy La Central Gallery, Bogota, Columbia
The La Central Gallery dedicated all of its Art Basel space to Nicolas Consuegra's 15-channel video installation that, to my eyes, was the best extended cinema piece in Art Basel Miami (and the satellite fairs) this year. The Water That You Touch Is the Last of What Has Passed and t he First of That Which Comes chronicled the Magdalena River as it runs through a depressed small town outside of Bogot. Presented as a moving ring, the river becomes a sensual emblem of rushing infinitudes and potential for a town that is in socioeconomic stagnation.
See it here: http://vimeo.com/81408376
6. Benjamin Degen / Shadow Ripple Reflection
Susan Inglett Gallery
Chealsea, NY
24 Oct - 7 Dec, 2013
Benjamin Degen, Dapple, 2013, Oil on linen over panel, 36 x 54 in.
Courtesy: Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC.
With Shadow Ripple Reflection, an uplifting exhibition of eight new paintings, Benjamin Degen showed us that he is better than ever. These works skirt bravely close to clich: sunshine, youthful figures lounging, reading, swimming, setting o ut and returning. But they take positive hold on the memory because they seem so unfamiliar in the fanatical and web-like detail in the non-flesh passages. In the most complex sections it is as if the pigment spun from spinnerets of a spider. The work may nod toward Matisse, Bonnard, Seurat, Renoir and Gauguin, but it is absolutely recognizable only as itself.
See more images here: http://inglettgallery.com/works.php?id=59
7. Ai Weiwei: According to What?
Prez Art Museum Miami (PAMM).
Dec. 4, 2013 - March 16, 2014
Ai Weiwei, Kippe, 2006, Tieli wood (iron wood) from
dismantled temples of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and iron parallel bars,
Collection of Honus Tandijono, Image courtesy of the artist
Of course Ai Weiwei makes the list. Most are familiar with his best pieces, but this is the first time an extensive survey of his work has landed in the States. According to What? went first to The Hirshorn in Washington D.C., and an equally rich iteration was mounted to inaugurate the new Prez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). The exhibit runs through http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/AZ.html March 16, 2014. It includes some of Ai Weiwei 's best sociopolitical work from the last twenty years and is directed at his native China and the world at large.
The exhibit includes Weiwei's most intense pieces, those that use found materials. For example, in Straight (2008-12), 38 tons of steel rebar was salvaged from school buildings in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The piece remembers the greed and corruption in the criminally shoddy construction of the buildi ngs. Ai Weiwei straightened every piece and had it laid out in massive waves along the gallery floor. In another work, Kippe (German for "precarious balance"), Weiwei remembers the loss of cultural treasure in the name of the new China. In the piece he has reclaimed iron wood (a gorgeous wood of astonishing density) from the destruction of a Qing Dynasty temple. It is presented as beautifully stacked firewood. It remains unglued, held together by an old playground set of gymnast parallel bars. The work is as smart as the best of Duchamp, perhaps even more so, for its beauty and its social conscience.
See the video on Weiwei's work in the 2013 Venice Biennale here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USz6UG6J_gA#t=16
8. Li Songsong/We Have Betrayed the Revolution
Sept 19, 2013 - Nov 09, 2013
Li Songsong in studio preparing for his Pace Beijing solo show: Li Songsong/We Have Betrayed the Revolution, September 19 through November 9, 2013, Courtesy Pace London,
Photo: Hu Xixiang
This Pace Gallery, London exhibit reaffirmed Li Songsong as one of the most important painters in Beijing today. These recent paintings are gigantic with a signature mortar-thick texture that reconstructs enigmatic essences of appropriated images in patchwork fashion. With social conscience, the work remembers bits of the collective memories of China that have current political r elevance. The paintings are admirably ambiguous both in content and form. Heavy materiality contradicts merging details/tonalities, and one easily shifts back and forth in thinking of the imagery as in a state of formation or dissipation. In an interview on the occasion of this exhibit he told me the following concerning paint thicknesses that extend two inches or more: "Texture is my way to fascinate myself into the boundless personal works. First of all, before the image speaks of the 'meaning', texture already exists. It is exactly this sense of presence that makes me agree with and devote myself into work."
One would think that Richard Serra would have a hard time living up to his previous accomplishments, with, for example, two New York MOMA retrospectives in the last 25 years. But this year's two-gallery Gagosian exhibit proved that the artist is not resting on his laurels. All of this work was made in 2013! Gagosian 21st street had the easier solution to poetry incarnated in untold tons of steel with serpentine shapes. Gagosian 24th street took on more difficult territory with rectangular slabs. Remember the notorious slab, Tilted Arc, and 1989, the year it was removed from a NYC Federal building plaza. Perhaps it would have fared better insid e the building. I have always favored the giants indoors; they seem all the more gigantic, dangerous, and impossible. Intervals was one of the best pieces with some of the thickest slabs Serra has ever used. As I listened to an ogler whispering "this is not art," I walked through Intervals and played with the idea of "domino effect" in my mind.
10. I am concluding by leaving # 10 blank as a way of highlighting my despair over the possibility of not seeing something of great relevance that I would have certainly put on this list. I would love a suggestion in the comments section below.
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Deep down we appreciate their steadfast and earnest guardianship, of course, but we can't help but laugh when these heroic pups are thwarted time and again by their elusive grass-watering enemies. So in celebration of our four-legged warriors, we searched for some of the funniest http://extension.oregonstate.edu/gardening/ dog vs. sprinkler battles on the Web. Vote for your favorites below!
