I've been involved in cirecuit design to the board level, and have also laid out PC boards, photo reduced the artwork, etched the boards, and built protoype products.

I would not think of touching an IR receiver, especially one as small as the one you link to. I chatted with an engineer at Xantech back when they were developing an IR receiver similar to the one pictured, and it took them months to get it right. This was a pro staff with prototyping and manufacturing facilities!

The best you're likely to be able to do is to put an IR receiving sensor into a chassis or a project box much larger than what you're looking for, and you'll have to come up with the proper shielding and bandpass filtering for the needed carrier frequency.

Of course, I'm also at the point where I'd rather buy something already made than go through the hassle of dealing with the board layout, mounting the board in the chassis or project box...do this enough times and the time overhead of the little stuff makes the accomplishment a lot less satisfying. I'd jump into it in a heartbeat if it were for a product to be manufactured, though, for two reasons:
*I'd be paid for the time I invested
*I'd not just have one, but I'd get to see lots of little babies from my ideas and work.