Design by Dogg?

Standing tall, hands lightly clenched at his sides, Snoop Dogg is paying close attention. Hold the brush just so, stroke it like this. House Painting 101. Not what he’s used to, but he’s game. Lights, camera. Two minutes of banter as he fakes it. “I’m doing splendid, baby doll,” he coos to the designer who’s guiding him. Cut. One more time. Cut. Whew, that’ll do. Where’s the paint remover? He’s got some on his hand. Get it off. Quick.

And so it goes on site with “Rock the House,” VH1’s foray into home design, in which rock stars play decorator for a day so a fan can come home to the surprise of his or her life. The artist, with considerable input from one of two designers involved in the show, does a make-over of a room, in Snoop’s case, the theme is dogs. Canine images everywhere, a doghouse entertainment center with “Snoop Dogg” spray-painted (by him) over the doors and a plasma TV inside to play his videos. Also a new plaid settee and burgundy shag rug -- Snoop’s favorite ‘70s flavors.

All the new stuff is given to the fan for free, and the access is set up through a go-between mole, usually a spouse or roommate. In the Snoop episode, which airs Monday at 10 p.m., the fan is Allison Ising, 31, an aspiring child psychologist and dog lover. She shares a house on a quiet street on the border of Venice and Mar Vista with her electrician fiance, Phillip Berry, 36, who refers to her as a “Snoopaholic.” Indeed, there are a couple of Snoop posters in a “disco room” out back, as well as a lot of smaller pictures of the rapper on the refrigerator.

Waiting for Snoop

The day begins at 9, uh, 11 a.m., when Snoop finally rolls up in his midnight-blue Porsche Carrera, driving himself from his Diamond Bar home with his publicist by his side. The show’s limo trails with another half-dozen burly guys -- bodyguards or whatever. No one from the neighborhood is watching when Snoop, 6 foot 4 in a cranberry-colored track suit and matching running shoes, elegantly unfurls himself from the car, which is a good thing, because the producers take pains to keep the shoots a secret. He takes the troop into a waiting trailer and disappears, leaving the VH1 cast and crew biting their fingernails. Prep work is well underway, but Snoop hasn’t yet seen the designer’s mock-up, and Ising will be home from her job at a catering company around 6. The make-over has to be done by then.

“We’re working on Snoop Time now,” says the affable Richie Abbott, the rapper’s personal publicist and an employee of Priority Records, which will release Snoop’s CD “Paid Tha Cost to Be Da Bo$$” on Tuesday, a day after his “Rock the House” first airs. Snoop is definitely the center of this world, but the show can’t really wait for him, so the new living room is taking shape without his approval.

“We always have contingency plans,” says Kim Rozenfeld, vice president for series development and programming at VH1 and an executive producer of the show. He’s been here for hours already, fully anticipating that Snoop would be late. Lisa Snowdon, the show’s perky English host, and Kelly Van Patter, today’s designer, have begun filming too, with a cast of on-camera workers who have cleared the room of its dog-eared contents and started priming the walls.

Snoop’s input so far has come from a brief questionnaire and a phone conversation with Van Patter.

What’s your style?

“ ‘70s.”

What are your two favorite colors?

“Blue, gray.” (Never mind that Van Patter has done the room in green and red.)

Is there an overall color of your ideal room?

“Rich.”

What one sentence sums up your style/taste?

“Laid-back.”

Take 2

The concept is to show a different, more homey side of the star, the person who likes to do normal stuff and loves the fans. The fact is, though, that this is not reality TV -- the artist is prepped, there’s a lot of acting. Snoop is clearly not a do-it-yourselfer, and when, at about 11:30, he emerges, jacket steamed out, hair re-braided, he knows he’s going to be working, if not sweating.

There has to be an entrance, so Snoop gets back in the Porsche and approaches the driveway. Screech. The low-slung car scrapes a bump in the sidewalk. Unfazed, he does it again. This time, though, he parks parallel.

Time to spackle. “OK, Snoop, so what we’re going to do here ...” says Van Patter, showing him how. He watches and says, “I’ll say, ‘I normally wouldn’t be doing this, but this is my No. 1 fan.’ ” Snoop is catching on. Cameras roll, and he snaps into character. “Well, let’s spackle backle,” he raps. “I want to make the house look sharp, never crackle.”

Van Patter tells him that the spackle won’t be pink when it dries. “Oh, I thought it was going to stay pink because pink is one of my favorite colors. I’ll tell you off-camera why ....” He turns to the camera: “Kids, don’t try this at home without your parents’ permission.”

It’s a kinder, gentler gangsta on display here. Snoop has quit smoking pot, “97 days and counting,” he says. He’s also been working on a pilot for an MTV show mixing comedy and music, “Doggy Fizzle Televizzle,” airing Monday at 10:30 p.m. Today, he’s joking around with everyone, and much of his chatter is about his three kids, especially the 8-year-old, whose football team he coaches. “They call me Coach Snoop, and when the other team runs on the field and sees me, they get a little excited. Hopefully, it distracts them, because we’re trying to win it all,” he boasts with a wink.

He takes a few minutes to sand a door, using an electric sander. “My wood teacher would be proud of me right now,” he says to the camera, then adds wryly: “The things I do for my fans.”

“Long strokes, as long as you make it smooth,” Van Patter instructs him. “That sounds like me, anyway,” Snoop says. He’s ad-libbing, being his almost-natural self. In a back room, a dozen or so technicians and producers hovering over monitors are smiling. “Perfect,” they murmur over and over.

Glitz and spackle

Marcos Siega, another executive producer, is clearly running the production today, although no one’s officially the director. He says he wants the show to highlight the star but also provide viewers with some how-to information. So where to buy spackle is dropped in, along with the joshing. “It’s a hybrid of a lot of things we’ve seen,” Siega says of the show. “We’re not telling anybody Snoop did all that stuff.”

At 1, they want him back on camera, but he’s in the trailer eating chicken. So they forgo the shot to keep moving.

Around 1:30 Snoop has to move to another trailer half a block away to do an interview for another VH1 show. He’s off-camera, but even this short trip is a production. Three men walk in front of him, two in back, and some are armed. As he strolls, a girl driving by screams, “Snoopy!” A guy on the sidewalk on his cell says, “Snoop Dogg is walking down my street.” This is inevitable, but it is also what the producers hoped to avoid.

After about an hour, Snoop and entourage head back to his trailer, where the Starbursts, Skittles and PlayStation he requested await him. He’s got some interviews for the record label lined up. It’s 3:45 before he’s finally back to “Rock the House,” putting up some wainscoting. He likes the now-green walls. “Green is for the money, gold is for the honey,” he says. And he wants to see Ising’s disco room.

“She calls it ‘the Snoopotheque room,’ ” says Ising’s fiance, Berry. “I built it for her so she could dance.” She was selected for the show not only for her devotion to Snoop, but also for her work with at-risk children. “She believes hip-hop really makes a difference in kids’ lives,” Berry says. He entered her in a contest on the VH1 Web site for “the ultimate fan,” a ploy to find people for the show without revealing the specifics. “I can’t believe I won,” he says. “The only thing I ever get is a cold, and now Snoop Dogg is in my house with one of the best decorators in the world, and they’re giving us all this furniture.”

Snoop steps into the back room. It’s filled with the former furnishings of the living room but remains pretty threadbare. A poster of Snoop hangs on one wall. “That’s a Hugo Boss suit,” he says. “That suit cost me $6,000. And the ring, that’s 2G. That’s pimpin’, man.”

Time’s running out

At 4:45, the yard is full of the new furniture, and the doghouse cabinet is being assembled. “You did everything I told you to do,” Snoop says. He likes what he’s seeing and pulls Van Patter aside to see what she might do for his own home.

By 5:30, it’s dark outside and Van Patter is clearly panicked that they won’t finish. Berry is trying to stall Ising. Snoop is hanging out in the kitchen, and he’s a bit jumpy. He was supposed to stay only until 6, but he’s ready to wait it out. He spots a wall calendar and marks his birthday on it. He’s signing a lot of stuff that will be hidden, to be found later. He’s also thinking about how Ising will feel when she comes home. “It’s like me waking up and Elvis is standing over me,” he imagines, “singing ‘Jailhouse Rock.’ ”

When Ising finally arrives, is shocked, and gets to meet her hero, her reaction is, of course, unscripted. Yet Snoop too seems genuinely moved. He meets her dogs, stands for many pictures, and there is much hugging. After a day staged for the cameras, this quirky hybrid of a show ends with a real payoff -- a sweet bonding between artist and fan that would be hard to fake.

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‘Rock the House’

What: “Rock the House”

When: Monday, 10 p.m.; repeats Nov. 30, 12:30 p.m.

Where: VH1