Some people have written, Jung and after, that everything in your dream is you or a part of you. I think it has to include your environment - so much of your brain is dedicated to perceiving it, and then "you" perceive the perceptions... so the house may be you and it may be your situation.
I have house dreams too, in which there is a house that is kind of a combo of various large houses I've spent a lot of time in. I'm always either cleaning up/getting rid of junk or arranging/moving in and, after a while and as I'm trying to finish, I discover a hidden but obvious and large room that either I'd forgotten all about or that I hadn't noticed yet, depending, and I always get a very strong Oh, so THAT'S where this was/what's been missing feeling.
I also have a lot of airport dreams. I think they are a subset of house dreams because I traveled a LOT as a kid and I feel very at home in airports. However, in the airport dream, I can't find my luggage or the gate or my passport or I can't make my flight back or I'm going to miss my connection or something, and there is a lot of trying to accomplish stuff while the world gets in my way. This one has mutated lately into a travel dream, where I'm overseas, almost always in Europe [I live in the US], and I DECIDE not to make the flight back because I so want to stay overseas, and there are subsequent worries about transferring the ticket or missing the job I was supposed to take but it's so great to still be in Europe.
I also have hotel dreams, in which I can never find my room or remember its number and I don't have a key or know where I parked my car, which has mutated lately into my not knowing where the room is and not having a key but instead of worrying I just take a room which is always unlocked and turns out to have my stuff in it, and is usually near one or more of my sisters' rooms.
I also used to have a recurring place, where I could be dreaming about almost anything and would come around a corner or through a wood or something and suddenly there would be the place, and I always had a great Aha, so that's where this is (sound familiar?) feeling. It was a lovely shaded moss-rocky pool with a little waterfall in the middle of a little clearing in a young wood, and behind it was an ivy-covered wall. Once I found it by climbing over that wall, but every other time I would come upon it from the other angle. Hasn't come up in years, that one.
WYSIWYG, I'm going to have to try your system of ever-increasing detail. Usually when I retell it the details get fewer, so this "other" trend sounds fascinating and useful. Also, who can yawn, the dream-teller or the adorable listener?
And Uncle DaveO, I think we all know what tunnel dreams (whoops, almost typoed Creams, LOL!) mean!
Lessee - this was a long thread to which to respond... Oh, yeah, I occasionally figure out that I'm dreaming (once I actually pinched myself to see if I was dreaming, and didn't feel the pinch, so I knew I was!) but I have never attempted to control the dream given that realization, despite wanting to while I'm awake.
But the worst is when I dream that I've woken up from a dream and am no longer dreaming, then when I really wake up I always feel like a fool!