Stig I'll throw a couple of things I screwed up 1st hand. Being close to the house really limits your options a huge amount. Examine really closely all the limbs on the tree. How large are they, which direction do they go, Is there a twist in the trunk, is there a multi branch trunk? Take all these thigs into consideration. They can all affect the direction the tree will fall. You can notch the tree to aid in this regard, but it will not be the only thing to affect the drop.
Also make sure your cutting on a windless day, or at least use the wind coming from the direction to aid you in dropping the tree.
I was helping my stepdad and BIL cut some trees at the BIL's house. We had cut 4 trees already and had cut them up and removed the brush. So we were getting tired, and we started on the 5th tree. It was not very windy, maybe 5-7mph, but it was blowing thru the tree toward the house. The limbs on the tree were spread around, but it had one heavy limb closest to the ground, but agin pointing toward the house. We notched the tree and started cutting the back side and with less than 1/4 of the tree left to cut, got hit with a gust of wind, maybe 15mph or so. It pushed the tree back and pinched the saw on the stump very firmly and sounded like the fibers were breaking. At this point there wasn't much we could do except pray for no more wind gust till we could figure it out. Long story short, I had a 150' rope in my truck and we put a ladder up the tree and wrapped the rope back and forth between the truck and tree and was able to pull it away from the saw enough to get it out and finished cutting the tree down. It scared the crap out of me.