I've also had decent luck with toner transfer.
I use the press-n-peel blue media; it's a bit expensive at about US$2 a sheet, but it works much better (at the remove after ironing stage) than the photo paper method.
A decent copy machine will put the toner on the transfer paper, if you can get access to a copier so that you can load your transfer paper into the paper tray. Before laser printers got cheap enough for individuals to own, electronics oriented publications would supply a PCB image that could be transfered using a copier.
My favorite chemicals are HCl (available as "brick acid" aka "muriatic acid" at pool supply and some hardware store/home centers) and hydrogen peroxide (drug store, mega mart/grocery health section). Easier to get, work with, and properly dispose of than FeCl.
Single sided designs are fairly easy. SMT is even easier (unless you get to the fine pitch stuff, and forget BGA), as that just means there are fewer holes to drill. Drilling the holes is the most tedious and time consuming part of the operation.
I've done mixed TH/SMT, with the TH stuff on one side and the SMT and traces on the other. (TH = through-hole)
If you are very steady you may be able to drill holes by hand with a dremel tool. Buy lots of drills if you go this route, as you'll break a bunch.
I use a dremel tool drill press adapter that works pretty well.
You won't have plated through-holes, complex double sided traces are painful to align, boards will be larger due to the more complex routing to keep them single sided, but I still find it to be a useful process for some jobs.
-j