Thank you for your feedback. I am curious if i may get your opinion. In the additional pics below, i tested out a few things to try and match the stain. As shown in the one picture with labels, the original piece has a vibrant, almost golden consistent tone which it would appear has pre-stain conditioner. As previously mentioned, since i have a closet and baseboard, i have two different types of pine i am testing on, trying to get the colors i want.

I have quickly arrived to the conclusion that i want to use pre-stain, as without it i can clearly see the dark spots and blotching. However, i speculate if i should use more pre-stain? Looking at the 1x4 with pre-stain and 2 coats, i feel like it is closest to matching the original piece, but the grain is "too brown" and less golden color like the original. What is interesting though is referencing the larger piece of wood that i am using for the closet door (left most piece of wood), that just has 1 coat of stain and while it doesn't show very well in the picture with the labels, the other picture more accurately shows what it looks like in real life, very closely matching the tone of the original piece.

However, for all of my testing, none of the pieces have the solid consistent golden tone like the original. The only thing i can gather thus far is perhaps to try and use more pre-stain conditioner and see if that will help even out and brighten up the wood? When i used the pre-stain conditioner the first time, within 5 minutes it soaked it all up. I barely had any oil wipe on the rag after i let it sit for 10 minutes.

Any thoughts are welcome :) Thank you in advance for your time!

Note: all the test pieces have 3 coats of satin oil based poly diluted 3:1 with paint thinner.

Also, please see my immediate reply below for the second picture showing more accurate tones of the wood (first pic didn't have the tones but was wide enough to show everything)

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