I'm registered on CNCZone and I've looked at a variety of other sources but I'm still unsure as to what CNC machine is right for me. I was quite set on Joe's design but that was before I went over the usable area dimensions and realised that it was much smaller than I initially thought it was. For some reason I concluded that it had a cutable area of around 1.5 meters or something by 80cm or something of that order.

I've checked out ebay a few times but all the machines there are either insanely expensive or not what I'm looking for. I don't mind going to professional CNC places to get pieces cut to make a DIY machine but the lack of good designs of a reasonable size is really quite annoying. Price wise, well I want to fit in to around $1k but as costs usually blow up, I wouldn't be surprised if I end up getting something worth $2k. But I would like to stay below that I think. Any suggestions of models?

EDIT: Joe's design is pretty much what I'm looking for i.e. a moving gantry type design (which is pretty much the only solution for larger CNC machines but yer, just saying).