The house hunting wasn’t going well.

In the spring of 2013, my husband, Mark Garfinkel, and I were stumbling through the Greater Boston real estate market in search of our first home.

Crowds of sharp-elbowed buyers swarmed open houses like bees. Demand for homes in places like Brookline and Jamaica Plain was so high that many properties went under contract as soon as they were listed. Bidding wars were de rigueur, and they made me cringe. We halfheartedly made offers, but I felt relieved when they were rejected.

I began to think that Mark and I would stay in my two-bedroom condo in Somerville, but then Mark, a longtime staff photographer at the Boston Herald, told me about a house in Winthrop. The Globe had featured the renovated Colonial as a Home of the Week.

At the time, I worked as a producer for the Globe’s Boston.com, but I had missed the story. Thank God we’re a two-newspaper town.

We visited the house on a Saturday. A man who lived next door told us the property was gorgeous.

He wasn’t exaggerating.

Inside, I found a home that conjured up memories of people and places from my past while tapping into my aspirational notions of domestic life.

First the nostalgia. It was everywhere.

The ornate bannister on the wooden staircase between the first and second floors took me back to Chapin House, where I lived for two years at Smith College.

Novelist Margaret Mitchell, another Chapin resident, drew inspiration for the staircase at the Tara plantation from “Gone With the Wind’’ from the stairs in the college residence, according to Smith. In Winthrop, I thought I could have my own grand staircase without the lovelorn drama.

Another staircase led to a third floor with walls and ceilings covered with Nantucket bead board. The space transported me to my first home: a brick residence in Pittsburgh’s Highland Park neighborhood.

The third floor of the Pittsburgh home was a getaway — a secluded spot where my father studied and we took turns using the Apple IIc computer. Climbing three sets of stairs to use the computer — the most advanced piece of technology in the house — added to its mystique.

On the aspirational side, I offer two words: chef’s kitchen.

There are two islands for food prep, two dishwashers, two ovens, two sinks, and a large gas stove with a grill. The Globe story described the side-by-side refrigerator as being “the size of Tuukka Rask,’’ the Boston Bruins goalie, and that was an understatement.

The refrigerator is so large that I sometimes tell guests that it came with the house. It’s my way of saying, “I wouldn’t pick out something like this, but I also didn’t turn it down.’’

The master bedroom also drew me in. It’s part of a suite that sits behind French doors and includes a bathroom and walk-in closet with laundry. A sliding door leads to a small deck with an ocean view.

The third floor has become an oasis for Mark, who feeds his love for photographing airplanes from a window that looks onto a flight path for Logan International Airport.

That passion inspired the décor in the nursery for our son, Leo, who was born in April. Leo arrived nine weeks early, so decorating his room with decals of airplanes, a control tower, and runway gave us a break during his long hospitalization.

We hope it’s a place where Leo finds inspiration in the skies, knowing he’s grounded in a place where his parents found a home on every floor and the stairs in between.

Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @lauracrimaldi. Send a 550-word essay on your first home to Address@globe.com. Please note: We do not respond to submissions we won’t pursue.