Once Upon a Remodeling . . . : Gingerbread House: An Encino home’s first owner admired traditional Norwegian country houses with colorful folk art decorations. The new resident wants it to be safer.

Encino’s gingerbread house is melting away, like the ending of a fairy tale.

For years, children walked past the Norwegian country house on Greenleaf Street to watch the gardener mow the roof.

They gawked at carvings of leaves on the eaves or, if they were invited inside, wondered at the Norwegian folk art called Rosemaling covering the high living room ceiling.

They called it the “Gingerbread House” or the “Hansel and Gretel Cottage,” and word of the unusual residence spread until it received worldwide press coverage in the 1980s.

But a face lift by the home’s new owner, Encino Realtor Albert Foulad, is greatly changing the house of fantasies.

Foulad, president of Century 21 Albert Foulad Realty Corp., recently stripped the roof of its distinctive lawn and the sprinkler that watered it. He said he is awaiting the arrival of a black and white tile roof.

He has removed the leaf carvings on the eaves around the house and reduced a rock and brick fireplace in the center of the living room, smoothing the sides and covering them with white marble tile that he also is installing in the kitchen.

Foulad said he removed the sod from the roof and the leaf carvings around the eaves because of termite damage. He smoothed the rock surfaces of the fireplace to make the living room safe for his sons, 2 and 8, he said.

Some distinctively decorated wooden columns and the Rosemaling--decorative flower paintings on the ceilings--will be preserved, he said.

On Monday the quiet back yard of the 3,000-square-foot home provided a peaceful reminder of its past. A well-manicured lawn leads to a large swimming pool. A half dozen leafy fruit trees grow beside the yard and tall hedges and palms provide privacy.

But in front of the house, several parked trucks and a half-dozen workers provided passers-by with a radically changed sight. Black roofing paper covered the former sod roof as a worker cut marble tiles.

The three-bedroom home was originally built on 10 acres at 17520 Greenleaf St. in 1938 by comedian Ben Blue, who had been to Norway and admired the traditional sod-roofed country houses there, with their colorful folk art decorations.

Blue built a stable, a small race track and another house that was a smaller version of the first and used the property as a home and working ranch.

Jo Ann Cowans and her husband acquired the residence in 1973, two years before Blue’s death. The couple worked lovingly to remove changes by an intervening owner and restore the home to its original state.

A picture in the Los Angeles Times in 1980 triggered a flood of international coverage, she said. “The Associated Press, United Press International and one other news service all came out that day, plus the ABC network news, which eventually ran it on ‘Good Morning America,’ ” she said.

“It appeared in newspapers and magazines everywhere. We received television interviews from Canada, New York and New Orleans. We had a Norwegian journalist come by to photograph it and do an article. The last show of ‘Real People’ photographed it and had a picnic on our roof. A Japanese network televised it for show there.”

The coverage continued over the years, Cowans said, until she and her husband moved to Woodland Hills and sold the property to Foulad for $900,000 earlier this year.

Cowans said she bought the property when her son was 4, as a home to raise a child in.

But he is now 21 and “It was time to move on,” she said. “We wanted to get into something smaller and easier to take care of.”

“It was really a great place. I was stunned when I went back and saw the fireplace changed. I couldn’t understand how someone would take down that beautiful fireplace and replace it with marble.

“But I don’t want to get into a fight with the Foulads. It’s their place now.”