Chefs Michael Cimarusti and Crisi Echiverri cook up ideas for their home kitchen

Michael Cimarusti, who moved to Los Angeles in 1996, settled in South Pasadena in 2007, and recently completed the renovation of the dining room and kitchen of a 1912 house.   (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Crisi Echiverri and Michael Cimarusti chose a 60-inch Viking range in a dazzling cobalt blue to accommodate restaurant size sheet pans. “We didn’t want stainless, we wanted color and warmth,” she says.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Cimarusti chops on a white cypress cutting board. “It’s what they use in the sushi places in Japan,” he says. “It’s the perfect density and does not dull your knives.”  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

From his self-proclaimed “drawer of redundancies,” Cimarusti displays vintage Bakelite handle tools. “The bullet shaped handles in the butterscotch color are the most collectible,” he says.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Copper double boilers are part of the couple’s collection of pots and pans purchased at Cookin in San Francisco. “It’s run by a woman with impeccable taste in kitchen wares,” Cimarusti says. “The last time we were there we spent three hours shopping.”  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

A pot filler faucet above the stove, with a backsplash made from Heath Ceramics tile. “I like that it’s undulating and handmade, and the gradation of colors,” Echiverri says.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Le Creuset casseroles are stored in a Coastal Cabinets drawer on a reinforced track.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

At 187 square feet, the Cimarusti-Echeverri kitchen is a model of efficiency with enough counter space, fabricated by Shadley’s Soapstone, to accommodate both cooks.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Bella Cimarusti, 16, watches her father, chef at Providence and Connie and Ted’s, dish up pasta for brother Dante, 12.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Cimarusti sprinkles feta onto his version of after-school mac and cheese, made with rigatoni and parmesan with tomatoes and jalapeno.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

The center island is big enough for working and eating, with space for three Taburet counter stools by Organic Modernism.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Cimarusti displays a vintage tumbler with Charlie the Tuna on the mahogany countertop of the dining room buffet.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Nesta, the family dog, does crumb-catcher duty on the door of the family dishwasher.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Echiverri picks herbs from a lettuce garden just outside the kitchen windows on a dining terrace, where, Cimarusti says, “we eat eight months out of the year.”  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Architect Susan Masterman reconfigured an existing kitchen into this period-authentic Craftsman dining room, which has a dining table and chairs by Stickley.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

The simple paneled cabinetry gets a period feel with brass handles that contractor Tony Magistrale reclaimed from a local elementary school.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Architect Susan Masterman enlarged the width and height of the doorway between the dining room and kitchen, “so they won’t feel sequestered in the kitchen.”  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

The dining room even has space for a small cocktail bar. The wallpaper, Captain Smith by Grow House Grow of Brooklyn, depicts underwater marine life.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

On the inside of an old door in the dining room -- which once led to the staircase -- the height of the Cimarusti kids is chronicled alongside previous residents of the 1912 house.   (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)