I have been doing all my clear pine - really recommend the prestain conditioner (or mix your own). I can tell the difference. Now, look at the blotches - some of it may not actually be in how the wood took the stain, but instead grain or knots/blemishes in the wood. Pine will have waves or circles in the grain, or light "specks" that get highlighted when you put the finish on, as well as (hopefully not) black knots. I don't mind a few small areas on casings, can live with larger waves and circles on baseboards, stools, jambs. If oyu have any really strange looking areas on your casings you should replace the wood - I like to have fairly consistent graining all around the area. Unfortunately, my modular came with trim precut and tacked in place, they didn't pay particular attention to matching the grain pattern on baseboards on long walls where they had to scarf. In fact, didn't pay attention to scarfing over studs. But I can hide a lot with furniture! You can't do that with casings (unless you hang drapes down the sides of windows, but what do you do with doors?).

Kelly, gorgeous, what a rich looking stain color!! You must be really excited, seems like you're getting there. And Allison, I always love looking at pictures of your house, I didn't realize your trim was pine. I don't know how I missed that, I'm on this site far too much!! So, I have a question for both of you, where did you get your stainable pine doors, and if you don't mind my asking, around how much did you pay for them? I have to find three doors to stain (the rest are painted) for my DH library. My gc seems to think fiberglass is ok, but we've always said stainable pine. Any help would be so appreciated! Oh, and I don't mean to hi-jack your thread, Kelly...your pictures are great, what is the rust paint color, I love it! Amy

When we did the master suite in our other house we had what seemed like acres of oak to stain. I can't tell you how much wood I ruined using Minwax, both the liquid and gel stains, because nothing matched. The tongue-and-groove beadboard would not match the flat door/window casings and baseboards (which were made from simple flat stock lumber for cost reasons) or the oak door, none of which would match the decorative moldings. I used pre-stain conditioners. I tried a shellac undercoat. I used a dang stopwatch to make sure I had the stain on the exact same time on every piece. I nearly lost my [expletive deleted] mind and came very close to having a nervous breakdown and painting the whole blasted thing even though that was the polar opposite of what I wanted and I know I would have ended up hating it. I remember screaming hysterically and throwing a can of stain across the basement at one point - thankfully it was mostly closed and hit a sheet of plywood that was sitting on a cardboard sheet to keep it off the concrete, so it didn't make too bad a mess. We had just been screwed over by the carpenter who was supposed to install all that woodwork and botched it, so we had to repurchase a great deal of the wood, therefore hiring someone simply wasn't even to be contemplated. In fact, we had to hire an acquaintance with virtually no experience in trim carpentry and have me babysit him constantly because he would work cheaply enough to get the job finished. Then I discovered Zar brand stain. It's thick, almost like pudding, and looks opaque in the can but becomes properly translucent on the wood. We used Aged Varnish which looked disturbingly bright orange in the can. LOL You hold a brush in one hand and a rag in the other - brush it on generously with one hand, wipe it off with the other, and you get into the rhythm very quickly. No waiting time. No drips. No lap marks. No fooling around. I was able to work for a couple of hours and quit because I got tired, and then pick up where I left off several hours or a day later with no difference in appearance, as long as I stopped at a rational point like a corner. It dried in moments after being wiped off. We used cheap 2" China-bristle brushes (the ones with the white bristles, which we bought in bags of 10 for about $8 from the hardware store) and foam brushes and chucked them - after letting them dry out completely - at the end of each staining session in order to avoid the time-consuming hassle of brush cleaning with an oil stain. Only needed one coat of stain and most importantly everything matched! (For some reason, some areas always photographed lighter than others, but IRL there was no difference at all from one area to the next.) Since the grain didn't raise, we did not need to sand before the topcoat went on - we used two coats of Sherwin Williams' Satin Fastdry Oil Varnish because I did not want the "coated" look/feel of polyurethane, and the varnish held up very nicely to moisture in the bathroom including my splashing around the tub. This is the best picture I have that shows the beadboard, decorative molding AND trim together:

We used pine treads and risers from Lowes on our stairs. I painted the risers white to match all the trim in the house and stained the treads with a cabot stain that I don't remember the name of. You have to use several coats of poly over the stain or so I was told. I think I used four coats, sanding lightly between each coat. They turned out nice but pine is soft. The dog's claws have left some scratches but it still does not look bad at all. I see it has been a few months since you posted. Did you finish the stairs yet? If so, how'd they turn out?