GO AHEAD ... FLOOR IT! 'MONSTER HOUSE' TRICKS OUT LIVING SPACES THE WAY 'MONSTER GARAGE' REIMAGINES AUTOMOBILES ... AND CREATIVE CHOPPER CONVERSIONS ROUND OUT THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL EVENING.

Byline: Theo Douglas Staff Writer

WHEN YOU'VE GOT a good line, stick with it - or better yet, expand upon it.

That's the case with the Discovery Channel, the cable network that recently built a highly successful Frankenstein with its ``Monster Garage'' series featuring Long Beach native Jesse James and his crew turning normal cars into paranormal machines.

Beginning at 8 tonight, the folks at Discovery will offer up a whole evening's worth of nail-biting buildups with its Full Throttle Mondays. It features not only more episodes of ``Monster Garage,'' but installments of ``American Chopper,'' a new father-son-bond-over-bikes series which premiered March 31, and a third, brand-new baby bringing the main house into the mix.

You may have heard rumblings as this one was birthed, for while fewer sparks typically fly per episode, Discovery's latest could revolutionize the way we look at Pottery Barn, ``Trading Spaces'' and Martha Stewart.

It's called ``Monster House,'' and in quite broad terms, what they're doing here is applying the ``Monster Garage'' concept to the rest of the family manse. Executive producer Thom Beers calls this deep-pocketed offspring the ``why not?'' series.

Starting with the Lopez family of Simi Valley, ``House's'' host, Steve Watson, an actor, contractor and stand-up comic, and his band of merry renovators turn one ordinary house a week into one crazy hipster pad, man, with wild inventions and, in the end, sleek paint schemes and flat-screen TVs.

The Lopezes are a good starting point, Watson explains via telephone, taking a break from revising the series' eighth home in summer-heated weather - this one a la ``The Magnificent Seven.''

``They have a need for speed. The husband and wife both race cars,'' the goateed, 30-year-old former Atlantan confides. ``We came in and completely renovated their house. It was a great show 'cause you see what you're capable of.''

Both it and ``Monster Garage'' start the same way - with a concept. For ``Garage,'' if they're turning a Ford Bronco into, say, a rock crawler, Jesse James will sit down with a posse of gear-heads and brainstorm on how to do that. At ``House,'' Watson confabs with a design team to figure out how to renovate the Lopezes' stark stucco midcentury home with attitude and bad-ittude to reflect their racing heritage.

Weekends find the Lopezes at the track, where they drag-race Hondas; so weekdays have to see them in a home with just as much horsepower.

``Now they have a huge bed on hydraulics. There's a dining table that drops out of the ceiling on a winch. It's built on the hood of the same car that they race,'' Watson says. ``The kids' room has a couch built out of the back end of a car, and in the living room, their recliner will do 30 miles an hour now.''

No joking, thanks to the machinations of a staff robotics expert. A veritable season's worth of ideas spring to life in episode one, followed up with more of the same, along with a few missteps - and the occasional industrial accident when someone accidentally nails his finger with a nail gun - the coming week.

Like ``Garage'' before it, ``Monster House'' wins where it captures the sheer moments of artistic triumph and the more frequent times of beat- the-clock terror.

``We have one day to design it, five days for the buildup, then one day where we bring the family (back) in,'' Watson says.

If the buildup is finished on time, and so far they all have been, the workers each get a prize pack of power tools. If they don't finish on time, well, no prizes. Finishing is not only expected, it's demanded.

``That's the pressure, that's the idea. People should not get the idea they can do this in a day in their own homes. This is not a show where you're doing potato dye impressions on a wall,'' says Beers, who executive-produces both ``Monster'' series and has seen only one failure, a stillborn hearse project on ``Monster Garage.''

``It breaks the mold. Listen to me, the whole idea, my philosophy for all programming, is my philosophy of life: If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room,'' says Beers, whose own mom once transformed their family home into a tiki paradise like the ``Monster House'' in episode two on June 9. ``It's true, so why not do it? People do extraordinary things in their homes, and let's celebrate that.''

Returning for another season is the James-helmed ``Monster Garage,'' at 9 p.m., with a wing-ding first two episodes transforming a hot dog cart into a dragster, then trying that out; then morphing a vintage Ford Bronco the following week into a monster-tired rock crawler.

``Again, I think it's the attitude. 'Monster' means, like Jesse used to say, 'Why do we do this? Because it's wrong,' '' Beers says, quoting James. `` 'Monster House' means turning ordinary stuff into extraordinary stuff. Same thing with 'Monster Garage.' Always think of Frankenstein: 'It's alive.' ''

``American Choppers,'' airing from 10 to 11 p.m., still has plenty of tattooed he-men, but its producer, Craig Piligian, claims it's something of an alternative to macho posturing.

``A lot of people who don't even care about motorcycles are watching our show,'' Piligian says of ``Choppers,'' which follows father and son Paul Teutul Sr. and Jr., of New York's Orange County Choppers, as they fabricate custom motorcycles.

``I tell you, the chopper's just the underlying theme,'' Piligian says. ``It's more about the father-and-son relationship. The whole premise of the show was to get the relationship between the father and son.''

FULL THROTTLE MONDAYS

What: The premiere of ``Monster House'' and new episodes of ``Monster Garage'' and ``American Choppers.''

Where: Discovery Channel.

When: ``Monster House'' at 8 tonight followed by ``Monster Garage'' at 9 p.m. and ``American Choppers'' at 10 p.m.

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Photo:

A couch made from the body of a Honda Civic Del Sol is part of a Simi Valley home's radical makeover in ``Monster House.''