President Trump has begun his latest White House construction project: repairs to the iconic columns of the historic building’s front entrance.

Workers have set up scaffolding by the North Portico columns, and on Thursday they dropped a covering over the side closest to the West Wing as the work got underway.

A statement from the White House described the construction as standard restoration work, including stone repair.

In a recent interview on “The Katie Miller Podcast,” Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, said Mr. Trump had ordered the repairs after seeing damage to the pillars.

“At the White House, you see the scaffolding on the North Portico right now,” Mr. Burgum said. “President Trump comes out to greet a world leader, he sees door dings in the pillars and says, ‘Look at all this stuff that needs to be repaired.’”

“It’s all historic renovation work,” he added. “We’re restoring the plaster, and not just at the door level — all the way up to the crowns of those towers.”

Mr. Trump has undertaken a Washington construction spree unlike any president before him, proposing at least 18 major construction projects with a potential cost of more than $1 billion. Much of it has been contentious, as Mr. Trump has skirted or tried to run roughshod over the normal review processes and sometimes bypass laws that would seemingly block him.

The columns join several other projects Mr. Trump has begun at the White House. None has spawned more fury than his sudden demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for a large ballroom. Work on that has already turned much of the White House grounds into a construction zone.

The construction on the columns appears set to be more modest. Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the Trump-appointed chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts, which advises on construction in Washington, has said he recommended changing the Ionic columns of the White House to a more ornate Corinthian design, which he described as the highest order in classical architecture. But he said Mr. Trump rejected that idea.