You can change the side of the titlebar buttons (min/max/close) by opening the skin in SkinStudio, going to the section labeled "Edit titlebars and Windowframes", open the section labeled "Edit Per Pixel Buttons" and for each button, go to the "Position" tab and put the check in the "right hand side" radio button.  Do the same thing for the "Edit UIS2 frames", "title bar buttons" if you use the UIS2 type of windowframe.

As far as better leopard/snowleopard themes, my favorite is iLook by adni18, which is a master skin, which you can get here: https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/windowblinds/7265/

I hope this helps.

That worked perfect and was perfectly easy.

You're fantastic and a genius... Thank-you!!

That could be either relatively easy to just slightly challenging depending on the start button you want to replace it with.  Did you want the replacement to be animated, or just a simple button?  If you just want a simple one, you could follow SkinStudio6 tutorial here: https://www.stardock.com/products/skinstudio/help/skinning_start_bar.htm#Making%20a%20New%20Start%20Button

If you want an animated one, there are 2 excellent tutorials:

1.  https://forums.wincustomize.com/361416
2.  https://forums.wincustomize.com/361485

I'll warn you ahead of time, "tweaking" skins will eventually lead to the hunger to create one from scratch, and once you've done that...the hunger only abates for a short time, BAM, you're addicted.