On the first point the house will be part of the quest after the first boss. It will be heavily worked on once Serene Forest is done. The next update adds a fully playable dungeon with a boss battle.
On the second point yeah, that was kind of a dev exit until we finished Serene Forest. The whole forest has doubled in size. More detail and landscape has been added. It is out of the new update which should be processed in a couple hours. Once it is out the forest will be vastly expanded and a lot of stuff will be added included the fix to those two things.