My wife used the expression "you are waking up the house" when my son was making a lot of noise. Now that is actually wrong, I think - that would imply that the house as an entity was being woken, which is wrong as the house is brick.
However, "you are waking up the entire house" is acceptable in British English. So why does adding "Whole" change the meaning so much?
My only thought was that it could be a corruption of "Household". Any thoughts?
 Just for clarification, I do understand that "waking up the house" carries the same meaning, but the interest was that the normal usage is the whole house. And I am interested in why this "whole" makes a difference.