I saw the Waterford's house and it's too big for me as well. I don't really have lag as much as I lose track of my sims really fast, so I've decided to build my own houses (as well as other important places like the grocery store, a meeting place and the red center) in the town center of Windenburg. I'm not 100% sure on the location yet but I think I prefer the Windenburg lighting over Willow Creek, which would probably be the most fitting place layout-wise.
I will upload pretty much everything I make to the downloads page on my tumblr, which at the moment is blessed-sims.tumblr.com - the url may change if the person who has been posting on reddit would like to use it. The CC is very amateurish though, I'm not very good at making stuff and I can't mesh at all, the best I can do is delete pieces of existing meshes. I'm already done with a small collection of clothes and accessoires but I need to test it and make thumbnails etc. Should be done today or tomorrow!
Also, there's definitely a mod that fixes the weirdly happy smiles, I've got it in my game right now but I didn't have the time to test it as of now. I can't post links but if you google "Floppant Less Smiling" you should be able to find it. I use the fine version.