Harry Truman once called the White House a 'glamorous prison.' Here's what presidents and their families have said about living there.

"Any man who does not like dogs and want them about does not deserve to be in the White House," President Coolidge once remarked, according to the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation. 

Truman wanted to put his own touches on his own personal "prison," as he referred to it, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In March 1948, Truman replaced the original awnings overlooking the south lawn with a balcony in order to give him and his family another outdoor living space and a greater view of the surrounding city.

However, some politicians criticized the move, calling it an expensive attempt to ruin the look of the White House. In the end, the cost of the renovation was taken out of the existing presidential household budget, according to the White House Historical Association. 

The White House has six levels, 32 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, and 28 fireplaces.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Ford's wife, Betty Ford, once added of living in the White House, "You also feel very much that you are in that proverbial fishbowl everybody talks about."

"Jack took both pride and interest in the rose garden. He wanted to know the varieties. He had ideas about the juxtaposition of colors, and if there were yellow leaves or other signs of distress he wanted to know what ought to be done and who would take care of it," Rose Kennedy wrote in her memoir, "Times to Remember."

"I must say I was a bit surprised, for I had never heard nor seen him demonstrate any interest in horticulture at home."

"Every evening, while I took a bath, one of the maids would come by and remove my clothes for laundering or dry cleaning. The bed would always be turned down. Five minutes after Ronnie came home and hung up his suit, it would disappear from the closet to be pressed, cleaned, or brushed," the former first lady wrote in her memoir, "My Turn."

"No wonder Ron used to call the White House an eight-star hotel," she continued.

"George said he knew this was going to be a job of decisions, but he didn't realize he was going to have to make a decision on what kind of rug to have in the Oval Office," Laura Bush told Architectural Digest in 2008. "So he did what he thinks is the smart thing for a leader to do — he delegated it to me."

"George and I read in bed," Bush said of the bedroom's design, "and so we're very aware of having good lamps. And I also have a mother-in-law who stays now in these guest bedrooms and will be perfectly frank about what she would like in the rooms and what she wouldn't."

"When we're in town here in Washington, in the evenings, 6:30 we want to be at the dinner table with our kids and I want to be helping with the homework," he said, according to the Obama Foundation.

However, President Obama also described the lack of reliable WiFi in the giant house and the many "dead spots" that "frustrated" his two daughters, Fortune reported in 2016.

"We found gold behind the walls, which I always knew. Renovations are grand," he told Time.

Trump also added a large flat-screen television and a crystal chandelier to the room, joking, "I made a contribution to the White House."

"I get up in the morning and look at Jill and say, 'Where the hell are we?'" Biden remarked during his first few months as president. 

"I don't know about you all, but I was raised in a way that you didn't look for anybody to wait on you," he said during a CNN town hall in February 2021, ABC News reported. "And it's where I find myself extremely self-conscious for wonderful people who work in the White House. But someone standing there and hands me my suit coat."