Hillside cottages where nothing large fits through the door.

A lot of Laguna housing is older cottages and canyon houses built into a hillside, reached by narrow streets and stairs, with small bathrooms and doorways that were never designed for anything to be carried out through them. Getting a cast iron tub out of one of those rooms is a genuine demolition problem before it's a plumbing problem.

Refinishing sidesteps the entire question. The tub never moves. Nothing is carried down the stairs and nothing is carried up them.

The other thing that comes up here is color. Laguna bathrooms have been remodeled around their original fixtures more often than elsewhere, so the request is frequently to match a tub or a counter to something specific already in the room rather than to go bright white.