I can make single sided PCBs in a breeze, when in a hurry I could span a board, populate it, test, redesign, etch a second board, populate it and test it in a night. Dual sided takes a bit longer, but I doubt it would take me two hours to make a single board. I have a "shitty custom system", I have a shitty mail service, so money is on the edge and time budget is usually blown by ordering over seas (local PCB manufacturers are crazy expensive and also take their time to make them) so I did expend a bit on tooling (a laminator for the toner transfer) and I can make 0.5mm pitch and dual sided PCBs with no problems.
About the self etched PCBs for drag soldering, I understand they are usually better than standard PCBs as exposed tracks gives you space for taking the excess solder to, with solder mask is a bit harder to take the excess solder out. I don't know any other difference in them, if you can meet the tolerances for the device. BGA might be a different story as there are several limitations in the design, spanning out a big BGA in a DIY friendly PCB is quite hard, tiny BGA packages (4 balls mosfets comes to mind) should be no problem.
JS