President Donald Trump spent a Saturday afternoon, like many other Americans on a late summer day: venting about setbacks to a backyard landscaping project.

How had a gash, some 75 feet long, appeared in the limestone newly installed in his renovated Rose Garden?

Aides pulled surveillance footage and found the problem. A subcontractor lugging a large bush on a broken and wobbly steel cart was to blame. Presidential yelling ensued. The yardworker’s boss was summoned, the workers publicly chewed out, the contractor barred from working at the White House again.

The episode — laid out in detail in a presidential social media post complete with the video evidence — embodied the singular focus Trump has placed in his second term on transforming the White House and city around it to his specifications.

A builder and a homebody, Trump has eschewed some of the regular routines of the presidency — from traveling the country to promote his agenda to regular summer vacations that offer an escape from the stuffy capital — in favor of nesting at the White House.

Some of the changes he’s made are cosmetic, from bedecking the Oval Office in gold, erecting two giant flagpoles, choosing new paint for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ iconic columns and, most ambitiously, green-lighting an expansive new ballroom on the east side of the White House campus.

These projects have at times appeared to pull his attention from juggling world tumult over his tariff program, the bloody conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and what he’s painted as a crime wave gripping major cities.

Meanwhile, without Trump holding rallies and events to promote his signature tax-cut legislation, the bill’s popularity has plummeted, with just 32% of Americans saying they approved of the law in an August survey by the Pew Research Center.

The stark contrast from his first term, when he jetted off to his Bedminster, New Jersey, estate during summer weekends, West Palm Beach, Florida, in the winters, along with rare public appearances, raised fresh questions about the president’s health on social media — in the kind of torrent that helped to sink his predecessor’s presidency and thrust Democrats into turmoil.

Trump spent just 30 days outside the Washington area between Memorial Day and Labor Day this year. In the first year of his first term, the president was on the road for 44 days during the same stretch. He is planning trips later this month to the UK and to New York for the U.N.’s annual meetings.

Meanwhile, his aspirations to remake Washington as a whole have drawn the president into the mother-of-all battles with his neighbors. Trump has unilaterally deployed federal police and National Guard across the city, and is asking Congress to authorize billions of dollars for what he’s pitched as a beautification campaign to overhaul everything from the grass to the aluminum safety rails on highway medians.

“He’s a 79-year-old who feels comfortable at Mar-a-Lago, but he knows he can’t just live at home,” said Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University. “He’s trying to turn the White House into what he’s most comfortable with, which is Mar-a-Lago.”

People close to Trump say he’s not interested in much travel during his second term and that his freshly gilded office provides a backdrop for his meetings with foreign leaders and impromptu press conferences. They also say he sees making changes to the White House – and Washington more broadly – as part of his legacy.

“They’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House for more than 150 years, but there’s never been a president that was good at ballrooms. I’m good at building things, and we’re going to build quickly and on time,” Trump told reporters recently about his plans for a $200 million addition. He added that it “pays total respect to the existing building.”

Trump has sought to use the updated Rose Garden to host guests — including a gathering of some of the wealthiest tech executives in the world that was ultimately moved inside due to rain — and frequently can be heard playing music out through newly installed speakers. His playlist, wafting throughout the complex, includes the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin,’” and “I Dreamed a Dream” from "Les Misérables."

“It was so such a terrible place to have a news conference,” he told reporters on Friday. “I said, Well, let’s use a beautiful white stone, emblematic of the White House, OK? And it’s been very well received.”

And the hulking 90,000-square-foot ballroom will address a longstanding complaint of first families who have had to hold large social events in temporary tents constructed on the White House lawn.

“I think you have to put into perspective that some of these changes are driven by practical needs,” said Anita McBride, chief of staff to former First Lady Laura Bush. “In this case with the ballroom, there is no question it has, you know, been a source of frustration for recent presidents who wanted to host bigger state dinners.”

Trump has said he would pay for the renovations at the White House, including the new ballroom. First families traditionally make changes to the White House as they move in, but Trump has faced criticism for the heavy alterations to spaces that are viewed by many as iconic — like the Rose Garden redesigned during the Kennedy administration.

“His endgame is he thinks he will go down in history with what Lady Bird Johnson tried to do: beautify Washington,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. But he added, “For what reason does one pave over the Rose Garden?”

The upgrades don’t stop at the White House. Trump claimed credit for the NFL’s Washington Commanders planned return to the city — though later threatened to hold up a stadium deal if the team did not revert back to its old name. He’s also renovating the Kennedy Center, where he plans to re-paint the columns, revamp the marble and renovate the stages in order to make it a “crown jewel.”

But Trump’s efforts to overhaul the cultural center, which traditionally had bipartisan governance, proved divisive and fanned concerns about a downturn in donations and ticket purchases. Elsewhere in Washington, residents have complained that Trump’s deployment of federal law enforcement has focused primarily on high-visibility tourist areas while underscoring long-held gripes about federal intervention in local affairs.

Critics have also noted the irony in Trump seeking $2 billion from Congress for his plan to fix the streets and parks of the capital city, just months after Republican lawmakers blocked $1 billion from the city’s budget. An executive order declaring that classical architecture should be the style for federal buildings also drew concern from advocates who say the city has benefited from ambitious design, like at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“President Trump is a builder at heart and has brought this talent to our Nation’s Capital. He is restoring American greatness to everything he touches – from the White House to our federal buildings and D.C. parks – and is fulfilling his promise to usher in a new Golden Age of America,” White House Spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement.

Other construction efforts in Washington undertaken without the president’s input have drawn his ire. He has repeatedly criticized the Federal Reserve and its chair, Jerome Powell, over the renovation of the central bank’s building and its cost overruns. Trump, who has railed against Powell for not lowering interest rates, has suggested he might sue Powell over his handling of the project.

One beneficiary of Trump’s building spree is Clark Construction Group LLC, which he has tapped to lead the building of the new ballroom and at the Kennedy Center. Trump recently told reporters that they will help him make D.C. a “fantastic, clean, beautiful place.”

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