I say go for it and build your own PSU!
I've built quite a few over the years and everytime you learn something new. It's not just electronics, there's so much more involved in building your own stuff. All the mechanical work to make a nice case, fitting the boards inside, choosing knobs and buttons and what have you is also good experience.
You could go the simple (and frankly boring) way and just use some LM317T for regulation. That would give you a 1,2-22V / 1,5A dual power supply. It would have reasonably good performance at lowest cost and lowest part count. You could add a little circuitry to make it go down to 0V, wich is a nice touch
![Grin ;D](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/grin.gif)
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I'm using a circuit wich was published in Elektor in 1982 (!), it's rather discrete with LM741's, LM723 and a bunch of 2N3055. My unit gives 2x 0-35V/5A. The only drawback is that the secondaries are not switched to reduce power dissipation, so I can use it as a heater, too. But other than that it works brilliantly and without flaw.
At the moment I'm about to replace the crappy analogue meters with new and shiny LED Displays wich hopefully will make it even more usefull.
Personally I wouldn't want a SMPS as my main bench supply. Two reasons really: Higher noise floor due to switching frequency and maybe I'm a bit oldfashioned about it
![Smiley :)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
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The SMPS solution is sureley not bad, it's certainly much more efficient than linear. It always depends on what you want to do with it, I suppose.
David