By 1825, the room contained 24 unfinished mahogany armchairs, four large unfinished mahogany sofas, eight tables made of pine, a door screen, a paper partition, a three-shelf bookshelf, a mahogany map stand, a washstand (with basin and ewer), and a clothes press. But for the most part, from 1818 to 1829 the East Room was unused. Occasionally it was cleared and used for dances, but usually its doors were locked and it served as storage space. A widely reported story claims that for two months in the summer of 1825, the East Room housed at least one live alligator that belonged to the visiting Marquis de Lafayette. but a lack of contemporary evidence suggests that the story might be apocryphal. Congress appropriated $6,000 to finally finish the room in 1826, although the funds were not made available until 1825. President John Quincy Adams used the money to repair the White House rather than finish the room.