How to hide or disable buttons on home page

Thank you, Amber, John, and Peter.

I've gone with Amber's solution b/c I don't want the area to be clickable. So I'm glad you all have given me solutions for both hiding and removing. Thank you!

What's left now is the filter:

Can you please tell me how to do two things with the filter:

1. How to remove the filter
2. How to adjust the filter's appearance (in case we decide to keep the filter on the home page)

If we keep it, we'll want the text to show better on this dark background.

Thank you!

@johndaigle's solution will work but I think the area will still be clickable. What @Amebr is referring to is this option.

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I think you're getting close, Martin. Try this.

The idea is to delete the default button images in the template under the Skin Editor Home Page tab.

For example:

Open Home Page  > Buttons > button-icon (under button-1-applied)

From the right, scroll down to the Background section > Image Path and delete the homepage-bookmarks.svg graphic, 

homepage-bookmarks-applied.svg, etc. and continue for each Home Page default Image.

Click Save. Create an Output Preset and specify the newly edited Skin. Generate and test.

Here are before and after screen shots.

Here is the generated Home Page after editing the Skin.