Well I have never read this thread until now or looked into servant mods, but last night (how lucky!!) after bringing my mage's guild apprentice to rosethorn house I was thinking I could make a servant mod to add a little life to the manors. I ran through the scripts in my mind and here is what I thought of.
A estate/farm somewhere which trains peasants into servants in exchange for them working the farm and you can buy a specific servants for houses with the servant quarters upgrade (I think there is a global which tests what you have bought, if not it would be easy to make one) and you pay them 1 gold a day to stay around or else they will return to the farm/estate. You can also buy wives at any house you have a double bed, they will cost a lot more and be more useless (like wives are

J/K), they will perform minor duties for the houses without a place for a servant to stay but at the more expensive houses they are "above" such petty work, they are purely aesthetic, I think sex mods are a waste of time because I have never seen one done well. And lastly, for those bigger houses which have a double bed, servants quarters and STILL another bed, then thats your bed for your Imperial battlemage, archer or knight, but lets face it, if you can get an Imperial battlemage, why would you want anyone else; mainly aesthetic, they will gaurd your place, mainly stand around looking kickass.
-Pay, servants and gaurds don't work for free, you load up their chest with money and 2 gold each per day will be scripted from the chest into their inventory (well actaully, 1 gold and a piece of food), you can pickpocket it back if you desire, but once they accumlate enough money they will each buy things to entertain their interests, like you may find a servant has bought a bow and he buys arrows to train his archery, or an imperial battlemage make potions in his spare time, or they may simply drink it away or hoard it until they can buy your manor off you and make you the servant
-Servants/not spoilt wives will replace any food, drink, armour hammers you have taken from your plate (or in the case of hammers, a shelf), at 8am in the morning, going off to the store and buy new supplies for a decent price from the money in your chest and replace the items, all by an incrediably simple script (if your a scripter and can't make it in your head, well then your obviously not a scripter).
-Wives will ask for money, you don't have to give it to them unless you want them to be happy and interesting, no such thing as devorce and it is expected of them to serve you no matter how much they hate you but they don't have to like it. But if you never give them the money for what they ask then they will be very boring, maybe they'll even cheat on you, they will buy books to read, jewelery to show off to their friends, clothing to make you love them, wine to make them love you and so on.
-Servants will go to shop at 8am then clean your house (aesthetically not practically, It is simple to make them clean it practically but it is very boring modding it), then they get off at 3pm and have their spare time till they go to sleep at 10pm, wake up 6, eat breakfast, go shop/clean. In their spare time they may go to church once a week (like your wife does), do previously mentioned things, wander around talking, go to the pub etc.
-You gaurd gaurds your place full time except when sleeping, but he may venture elsewhere to buy booze, mage's books or alchemy gear but he will quickly return, if there is room they may bring with them a target outside your house to train his destruction/archery/weapon, or train his magic skills in doors, read a book, have a drink or stand outside the front door to welcome you on return and talk to the local girls.
-Also you can dictate your servants and gaurds uniform, they may wear the local milita uniform, imperial legion uniform (with hood if battlemage), imperial palace uniform (with hood if battlemage), or plain clothing, servants you can dictate how expensive their clothing is, so they can look noble in their own right or a petty servant scum. If your wife likes you (aka you bought her lots of stuff, she is shallow) then you can choose her outfit, if she really likes you then you can ask her to walk around naked, in that case she will stay around the house, don't want the neighbours seeing, I can imagine a lot of people may do that, just an incentive for buying her lots, of course she is much more interesting when she doesn't lock herself in the house.