and had I really had more time
Ay, there's the rub. My comments should be taken in an "ideal world" scenario which, of course, isn't very realistic, particularly when we're talking refactoring rather than writing from new.

I'll take working code delivered on time before I'll take elegant code delivered late and I'm also a firm believer in "if it aint broke, don't fix it". There was a thread floating around about a year or so ago which proposed that you should be constantly refactoring your code. I thought that was insane and just a recipe for introducing instability. You should refactor as rarely as possible and, when you do, keep your touch as light as possible. If adding some comments is a shortcut to clarifying archaic but stable code then I'd take the comments in preference to refactoring.

Yeeeeah, I think we're violently agreeing here
Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!