A house I built in single player burned down. Watch the video to see what happened. Note to self: never build houses entirely out of wood
I think houses made out of wood is a great idea, what a bad idea is having a house made out of wood and having a fire in/near it.
I've always built with wood just because it was one of those materials in minecraft you could always get. But then I relized that my house would probably burn down and I continued to use wood. I'm not that bright.
In older versions of Minecraft where there were only oak wood slabs, the slabs weren't flammable, and you could build a house out of them and have a fireplace.