Re: newbie restoration
From my experience (somewhat limited but obtained at a cost of making some minor, yet time consuming and costly mistakes); the buttons or snaps are usually mounted to the hull using a course threaded screw. If you look in the center of the snap and see a Philips head slot pattern you should be able to remove / unscrew these by hand with a screw driver in order to remove them. Just be careful when screwing them back onto the hull so as you do not over-tighten them and strip out the hole.
As far as the railing mounts go, most boats are built in two parts; the top and the bottom and then joined together (the reason why there is usually a metal molding / bump cover around the whole outside of the boat). When they are building the top part of the boat they have full access to the bolts that mount the railing brackets. Once they fill the hull with floatation foam and join the two parts together, it is nearly impossible to gain access to both sides of the bolts. I made the mistake of unscrewing / removing the bolts from the mounting brackets and then had to use lag bolts and toggles to replace them. I wish I had just hand sanded around the mounting brackets and called it good enough.
Hopefully someone else out there will have a better solution then I was able to find when sanding and restoring my hull...
Good luck.
