Riveting is not hard to do and rivets matching the originals are available and cheap. You do need some special tools for semi-tubular rivets which can be expensive, but sometimes you can find them cheap on ebay and such. I use a local place for supplies:
http://www.rivetsinstock.com/
For doing rivets in the middle of a chassis where a hand or small bench squeezer is not practical, I just use a hand tool that holds one side of the squeezer set and back the other side up with a heavy piece of steel holding the other side squeezer and tap it with a hammer. Here are some that I've done using this method: