Too late to help now but maybe someone else will benefit. I gel stained my Pella fiberglass entry door 6.5 years ago and it looked great! Used Minwax gel stain and their spar varnish, as directed by Pella. However, it did not stand up to weather at all. It chipped and had to be varnished again every 6 months. This Spring it chipped all the way through to the fiberglass and pulled stain with it! Believe me, I did everything properly. My door faces south east and has no roof. But a neighbor whose fiberglass door faces north had the same trouble - he used the same products as I. My neighbor got disgusted and stripped his down to fiberglass and restained it with Sikkens products 3 years ago. No trouble since. Sikkens makes a Door and Window stain that does not require varnish over top. Fortunately for me, just before I started stripping about 36 layers of varnish off my door, it delaminated! Pella brought me a new unfinished slab (under warranty) and I'm using Sikkens to stain it. I've been told the varnish is the trouble. It's like putting a sheet of glass against the door, trapping the heat. Plus it isn't flexible enough to expand and contract. If I put up a storm door to protect it, the problem would've been worse due to trapped heat. Sikkens is specifically made for fiberglass doors. I don't have any vested interests in the company but thought I'd try to help the next guy... Here is a link that might be useful: Sikkens Door and Window stain

Thanks for the additional input, sombreuil_mongrel and projectsneverend! More good information. UPDATE: I called General Finishes today to discuss the problems I was having with their gel top coat. He informed me that even though I sanded my cabinets, due to the fact that they had previously been finished, there would still have been some wood sealant on the surface of the cabinets, which would hinder absorption and drying. He said I should have waited 4 to 5 days before applying the top coat, but then at another time in our conversation he said that since I was working inside my home (dining room, northern climate w/low humidity, furnace running nearly non stop) that it should have been dry when I applied the top coat. I told him I was too afraid to try the top coat in a few days as it had ruined my stain job before, and I just didn't trust it anymore. I asked why their instructions didn't address this type of situation, and he said their instructions are for raw wood only. Ultimately, I have to give a lot of credit to General Finishes, because they stepped up and offered to send me another top coat recommended for my situation: High Performance Polyurethane Water Based Top Coat along with a "kit" to get the job done (which I believe includes a foam brush and I don't know what all.) He recommended 3-4 coats, and with drying time being just a few hours, I can do 2 coats a day. KUDOS TO GENERAL FINISHES. THEY CARE ABOUT THEIR CUSTOMERS. Here's a before & after pic (minus the top coat)

Thanks BMU, I will take your advice on much of this. Yep, I am going to back up and stain the legs with some sort of Espresso like the chairs. I am a bit disheartened right now trying desperately to get the old finish(s) off of the legs that are turned. I now realize that this table was touched up after the original and not a very good job at that. Some places are hugely built up gook and the underside is raw in the table top center but the drop leaves are literally full of drips and runny old dried stain. I am stripping the bottom of the leaves and will do them better than the runny mess they are. I will use the center of the table for trial stain Although the underside center of the table is nearly 'white' whereas what I am stripping clean has a reddish tint to the wood. I am not sure if sanding will remove the redish hue or not. I am going to go and get a brush and see if it works better for the turned legs ??? I am also using two coats of stripper. The first one just takes globs of sludge and dries very fast. I am using an MC stripper. The table top is actually two pieces of wood that were apparently glued in the dead center at one time and I see that on one end the glue was gone and the boards do not sit flush. I have no clue how to try to stick them back together but I have my thinking cap on. I am afraid to try to stick glue in there for fear of getting it on the table top and it would stain differently ?? What do you think of a small piece of wood on the underside glued board to board and clamped while drying? I have used Poly wipe on my tables and will take that advice at the end. It is a pretty table and I'm sure at one time it was a treasure but it certainly has seen its years of service and there are dents and there is three very bad liquid marks that I doubt if I can get to stain evenly. I sure appreciate your time. I want this to look pretty for her. It is an elderly couple and they have a tiny kitchen and this table is perfect for the space. I am thinking that I have to stop trying to make it look as smooth as the chair which is brand new. Donna

Stain always changes color with different pieces of wood. Even pieces cut from the same tree will stain differently. To stain many different pieces of wood and get similar color, several things have to be done. First, the correct pretreatment has to be applied. That is done to seal the wood so more porous sections do not soak up stain and be darker than the less porous areas. Then, a recipe is usually the better choice, rather than relying on a single color. That allows the different colors to blend better as they soak into the pretreatment and the wood. Lastly, the finish coat can be used----as suggested with the varnish tinting----to even out obvious differences in shade/color. Obviously, that requires some experience or trial and error experimenting to get it right. I've done color shading to make repairs match the other pieces after spot repairing trim. And used the varnish with dyes to achieve the same color on multiply pieces.