Joebell wrote this Instructable detailing the process of making a double-sided PCBs with a laser cutter:
With a little practice, you can make excellent double-sided PCBs by combining a laser cutter with chemical etching. The basic idea is: the laser cutter blasts away spray painted etch resist, then chemicals eat away the exposed copper. Once the copper is gone, the underlying board can be cut again with the laser to make through-holes. No drilling required! After some setup and practice, you should get reliable boards with 8-mil trace/space and hundreds of holes in about 2 hours. You can even cut internal routing and odd board-shapes!
Via Hacked Gadgets.
would a fan blowing across the work surface during the laser step reduce the re-deposited paint problem?
It might also be possible to apply soldermask which is then selectively stripped by the laser in the same way.