The US president has spent much of his first year back in office changing the historic building he fought to reclaim.
He was on the roof.
The press craned their necks, looking to where a sitting president does not usually stand.
"Mr President!" one reporter yelled. "What are you doing up there?"
"Taking a little walk," Donald Trump replied, as if walking on the White House roof was business as usual.
He moved his arms in a circular motion, creating an invisible ball in the August air.
He promised "something beautiful".
"It's just another way to spend my money for the country."
Mr Trump re-entered the White House in January.
Over the course of the year, the US president has embellished, renovated, paved over and bulldozed various parts of the historical building he fought to win.
In the Oval Office, flashy gold accents now adorn the curved walls — even the ceiling's crown moulding has not been left untouched.
The president denied the rumour the appliqués were store bought and painted, telling Fox News, "This is not Home Depot."
By mid-year, Mr Trump made good on his promise to pave over the Rose Garden.
The space has been used for press conferences, award presentations and the occasional wedding.
"Every event you have, it's soaking wet, and the women with the high heels — it's too much," Mr Trump told Fox News during a tour of the grounds.
He stressed the roses would be staying.
But the grass? Gone. And replaced with? "Gorgeous stone."
But the most dramatic changes were yet to come.
Mr Trump has long talked about about constructing a grand ballroom that would improve the "people's house".
The earmarked site was the East Wing, constructed in 1902 before undergoing a major expansion 40 years later.
But the wing struggles to host large gatherings, with state dinners often held in tents outside on the South Lawn.
So down it went.
"It won't interfere with the current building," Mr Trump had said earlier this year.
"It will be near it, but not touching it. And pays total respect to the existing building, which I'm the biggest fan of. It's my favourite."
The gargantuan ballroom will be 8,300-square-metres — nearly double the size of the White House — and is expected to be able to host up to 999 people.
Initially, architect James McCrery and his boutique firm had been hand-picked by the US president to oversee the project — he was even spotted on the roof with Mr Trump.
But this week the White House announced they were now working with Shalom Baranes Associates, amid reports of tension around the expanding size and scope of the project.
A big project also comes with a big price tag.
Mr Trump says the ballroom will cost $US300 million ($460 million), paid for by himself and "some friends of mine".
A render of the ballroom shows high ceilings, arched windows and plenty of gold, not unlike Versailles' Hall of Mirrors in Paris.
But Mr Trump's ballroom will be 10 times the size of the Hall of Mirrors, says art historian Robert Wellington, an associate professor at the Australian National University.
"Trump is well known for equating bigness with luxury and success," he told ABC News.
"He's a bit of a magpie, he's picking up on these signs of luxury and using that to really build his brand — both commercially in a corporate sense, but also politically."
So what is driving Mr Trump's sweeping changes throughout the White House?
"Ego and legacy," says Bruce Wolpe, a senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre.
"His ego has no bounds as far as his skills as a builder and a developer.
"And his legacy: he wants to make something that's going to live for generations after he is gone and that people will know him and remember him by.
"He's packed the boards that have to review such public projects with his acolytes and supporters — so there's no one to stand up and say 'I'm sorry, Mr President, you can't do that'."
Building an aesthetic
Donald Trump's signature style is obvious throughout his prominent real estate portfolio.
When Trump Tower opened in 1983, a seemingly sceptical New York Times admitted it was a "pleasant surprise", describing its marble and gold atrium as "warm, luxurious and even exhilarating".
"It has not been difficult to presume that Trump Tower, the 68-story glass skyscraper at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, would be silly, pretentious and not a little vulgar," read its coverage.
"In fact, the atrium of Trump Tower may well be the most pleasant interior public space to be completed in New York in some years."
There is "always branding involved" when it comes to the president, Mr Wellington says.
"His name is always prominently displayed on his buildings. There is this sort of interconnection between the identity of the man and the aesthetic that goes with that," he said.
"[In The Apprentice] he takes a batch of these would-be apprentices into his apartment and talks about, well, 'if you're really successful, you can live like this'."
But Mary Trump was scathing of her uncle's decor choices in her book, Too Much and Never Enough.
She visited her relatives at Mr Trump's penthouse apartment in the towering skyscraper for Father's Day in 1998, and wrote: "Everything was marble, gold leaf, mirrored walls, white walls, and frescoes."
"I'm not sure how he managed it, but Donald's apartment felt even colder and less like a home than [his previous house] did."
In 1995, a decade after purchasing the sprawling Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Springs, Florida, Mr Trump converted it into a members-only club (and would later use it as a 'Winter White House' of sorts).
As Mary Trump writes, there is a "through line" from Trump's first dwellings, to the Trump Tower triplex, to the West Wing, "just as there is from Trump Management to the Trump Organization to the Oval Office".
"The first are essentially controlled environments in which Donald's material needs have always been taken care of; the second, a series of sinecures in which the work was done by others and Donald never needed to acquire expertise in order to attain or retain power (which partly explains his disdain for the expertise of others)," she wrote.
"All of this has protected Donald from his own failures while allowing him to believe himself a success."
Mr Wolpe says Mr Trump's background in property development has shaped how he views the White House in relation to himself.
"Other people [who] have become president have either served in the military or served in politics or both, and their conception of the scale of government buildings is wedded to their identity as public figures," he says.
"He's torn all that down and goodness knows what's going to come up, but it's not gonna have a lot of history.
"It's gonna have a lot of Trump."
A legacy-defining deadline
US presidents are limited to two terms only, despite what Mr Trump says otherwise.
According to Mr Wolpe, this looming deadline is what is driving Mr Trump's sweeping White House renovations.
"Time is short," Mr Wolpe said.
"The first term he was ultimately overwhelmed by things and he was defeated for re-election."
Mr Wolpe says Mr Trump used the four years between his presidential terms to think through how he wants to leave his mark in significant ways.
"It's not just grand things on peace like Ukraine or grand things on tariffs and immigrants and the economy.
"He wants to do grand things on the stature of the presidency. He's remaking the presidency in his image.
"Future presidents will have to live with his image of the White House and he wants to make sure they do."
A few months ago, Mr Trump revealed his plans to build a Paris-style arch just west of the Lincoln Memorial.
The proposed structure bears a striking resemblance to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the famous monument at the end of the Champs-Élysées honouring those who fought for France during the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars.
There is currently no publicly known price tag, nor a construction timeline.
Between the arch and the affinity for gilded space, it is easy to think the US president is inspired only by the French.
But Mr Wellington says Mr Trump's references are more complex.
"When we're thinking back to the early presidents, we have to think about the 18th century — France was the dominant world power in terms of art and culture," he says.
When we dig a little deeper, Mr Wellington argues, there are references that have trickled down from 17th century France, through 19th century Gilded Age America and "that style filters into the first luxury hotels and that's where we get to Trump".
"Trump isn't going direct to the source of Versailles for his style," he says.
"I think he's really drawing upon a tradition of luxury born out of a 'robber baron' capitalist aesthetic that's inherited in the 19th century," Mr Wellington added.
"Trump has taken this kind of aristocratic style that has been used to support the kind of claims to power for successive generations and put it forward for his own corporate ends, for his reputation to show that he is a successful business person.
"He's taking that very same model and using it for his presidency."
In November, a sign was spotted outside the US president's workplace.
In gold-coloured cursive lettering printed across three sheets of white paper were the word's "The Oval Office".
According to Mr Wolpe, it looked like signage you would see at Mar-a-Lago.
"He's treating the White House like a hotel: 'We're going to show you the names of all the rooms'," he says.
"He says, 'How the hell can you criticise me, look at how successful I am'.
"There is no one who can tell him off because he is the president and he has succeeded.
"And that is why this will not be stopped."
