If you say Refactoring One more time..

I'll PUNCH YOU IN THE BINRAT. GOD SHUT UP.

Yes you can refactor parts of code. Yes, but it takes time and in large projects where everyone depends on that interface it is going to take a lot of work. Also for the love of god, 30KLOC IS NOT A LARGE PROJECT.

I think refactoring works best on a large project where people are coming in and out a lot(sup open-source). When you refactor it's like rewriting, but usually a lot simpler. And when you rewrite, you get a better internal concept of how the code works. So rewriting and refactoring are good(mentally) for the developers, even if the code itself doesn't improve substantially from it.