As for building a house, you have to use the roof tiles to give houses dimension. Look at any screenshots of other people's games and you'll see what I mean. Check the Projects section and the Screenshot Thread for examples. Also, THe Tutorials Database has a few mapping tutorials.
As for your resource requests, there's a sprite of a horse in the RTP Animal spritesheet. As for the others, you would have to make a request in the Resources section. Also, check out the Database and look at the Resource Links thread located there.