I’ve been wanting to do a pi lab myself someday, and your post is so encouraging! Were there any guides or other things you used to get going that you found particularly helpful?
I had a look through my bookmarks and found this great writeup. This goes into a lot of detail and talks about a lot of services which might be a bit confronting. Honestly, searching for smaller piece by piece guides for installing this service or that service and slowly building out your projects is a good way to go.