This is actually sort of a pre-lab story, as it happened before my lab in grad school was even established. It pre-dates my time at NIST, and happened long enough ago that the statute of limitations has surely run out, so I feel safe telling it.
The lab I worked in in grad school was acquired by the group a couple of years before I got there. It had previously been used by a group doing something involving wet chemisty, so there were lots of benches and sinks and other things that we didn’t need or want in a laser lab.
They brought in the NIST facilities crew, and asked them how much it would cost to have the room renovated to remove all that stuff. The answer they got back was completely outlandish– thousands of dollars, way more than they had available in the group budget.
Of course, they couldn’t let prime lab real estate completely go to waste. So, a guy who was a grad student before me and one of the permanent staff in the group took care of the problem.
They stayed late every night, and went into the lab with hammers. They broke up the benches, ripped out the cabinets, pulled out the sinks, and generally destroyed everything in the room. They broke stuff down into small-ish pieces, and carted it down to the dumpster on the loading dock a little at a time, after everyone else had gone home.
After about a month of this, the room was down to bare walls with a few pipes sticking out of the wall. Then they called in the facilities staff again, and asked them how much it would cost to cap off the water and gas lines that were all that was left from the original lab.
Group legend had it that they got the same estimator sent out to look at the job, who was a little startled to find the room empty…