This bothers me that these days average engineer can't afford to buy or rent reasonable sized space to do experiments like this. My dream is to build my own IC

This bothers me that these days average engineer can't afford to buy or rent reasonable sized space to do experiments like this. My dream is to build my own IC but I am sure doing that in my living room would likely turn it into something uninhabitable. I've been looking at renting some space in an industrial zone, but that's out of reach money wise even in a remote area.