Logs to luxe

April and Bryan Zilai were looking for something different in a home, something truly original. They found it in an authentic log cabin in Rancocas Woods, an enclave of about 50 homes in Mount Laurel whose wooded trails and distinctive dwellings seem straight out of a storybook.

Still, a few homes on these winding streets have broken the mold and no longer look anything like the log cabins they started out as in the late 1930s. In fact, turning a corner in this neighborhood occasionally yields a big surprise.

Like Tom and Alicia Kuensel's place. Two extensive renovations have tripled the size of the little one-story cabin they moved into in 1994, transforming it into a sprawling home.

The Kuensels' house sits back-to-back with the Zilais'. They could hardly be closer, or more different.

"I always wanted to live in a log cabin," says Tom Kuensel, 40, who owns a plumbing and drain-cleaning service. He used to live in nearby Riverton and often drove around Rancocas Woods, hoping to find a cabin for sale to satisfy his desire to live close to nature, nestled in logs.

He succeeded in his quest just before he married Alicia, a medical technician who enjoyed sophisticated big-city life when she lived close to New York, in North Jersey.

Fourteen years ago, Alicia, now 39, gamely moved into a cabin in terrible disrepair. "I was in shock - I almost cried," she says.

Her husband set about improving things. But it soon became clear that to update and modernize the home enough to make Alicia comfortable, the primitive style he preferred would have to yield to something far more modern and luxurious.

Which is how it came to pass that the couple, now the parents of Morgan, 11, and Isabella, 5, are living in a rambling two-story contemporary house in which only one log wall remains as a vestige of the way things were.

(The Kuensels investigated doing a complete modern log makeover, but the cost was astronomical. They managed to add some quarter-round log siding to the exterior - not the real thing, but a reasonable facsimile.)

"This was our original master bedroom," Alicia Kuensel says, pointing to the small first-floor space where that original log wall still stands - a room that now is used as an extra storage/guest room in the 4,500-square-foot house. Upstairs is an expansive master bedroom with no logs in sight.

An ambitious 1999 renovation resulted in their dream kitchen, which features every bell and whistle, from granite countertops and cherry cabinetry to a tin ceiling and a stone-clad gas fireplace. A huge basement includes a sports bar and a game room, along with a playroom for the kids.

"We've come a long way since that log rancher," Tom Kuensel says. "But this is home for us - this is where we're staying. We still have the woods all around us, and we have a home that works for the way we live."

Just across the backyard from the Kuensels is a 1,500-square-foot log cabin that looks like something the Three Bears might inhabit. But its owners are genuine Homo sapiens - April and Bryan Zilai and their children Cadence, 3, and Brayden, 1.

The Zilais, who moved into the house in 2005, have maintained as much of the circa 1939 log cabin as possible, with Bryan, an Emmy-winning videographer for the Fox network, doing some necessary updates on the upstairs bedrooms. But their dream is to live almost as the cabin's original owners did decades ago.

It means a tight squeeze for the Zilais, who use every inch of available space, with two bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs.

It also means that April Zilai, 34, who creates handmade fabric pocketbooks, can work from a studio alcove ingeniously carved from the renovated master bedroom. She admits to being a "fabricholic," and samples provide impromptu wall decor in the bedroom when April is working on her Cabray line.

"We absolutely love the feel of the house, which is the opposite of a standard development home," says Bryan, 35, who grew up near the Jersey Shore and hopes his kids have the kind of childhood he did, with lots of roaming room outdoors. "We've tried to create a home that feels like a little lodge, and that is really a sanctuary for our family."

Despite its vintage orange-shag carpets, non-wood kitchen cabinets, and low upstairs ceilings with fluorescent lighting, the couple fell madly in love with the cabin when a real estate agent showed it to them. Its authentic pine-log construction and cement chinking had instant appeal.

"We were leaving an older home in Norristown . . . that also had character," April says. "But not nearly as much character as this house."

Logs are in every room, with the dining room taking the prize. All four walls there are made of logs, and a pine table that once belonged to a local entrepreneur, the late William Spencer, seems custom-made for the space.

In a renovation of the kitchen that preserved its original style, the Zilais happily exposed ceiling beams that had been covered over. The living room has two full log walls, and most of the downstairs floors and the narrow staircase are the original pine.

There are compromises, of course, when a family of four lives in 1,500 square feet. The two spare bedrooms downstairs are being used as a guest room and a playroom. The couple's young children share a bedroom upstairs, and for now, that works.

Yes, the log interior and exterior require maintenance, and yes, there is more dust in genuine log homes than in conventional homes.

But it's worth the effort, the Zilais say.

"Absolutely! Living here is exactly what we thought it would be," Bryan Zilai says.

"Actually, it's much better!"