New construction stain/seal package advice

Many years ago I helped a painter stain a lot of molding. He had a spray booth and did lots of spraying but for some reason opted for the following...

He had 2 new cotton wash mitts, wore rubber gloves under them, poured his stain into a clean 5 gallon bucket. It was my job to walk the molding away from him while he held the mitts, full of stain over the molding. As corny as it sounds, it worked great for the mass amount of molding he had to do. Of course the molding has to wiped after the stain sits a while.

Back in the day, we used to trim 95% stain it jobs, of apx 200/yr. As a trim carp, I hated pre sealed trim...stain, no problem. The sealer had a tendency to make the trim warp, dulled saw blades faster, & was near impossible to work with. Typically my jobs were stained, installed, sealed, color puttied, & finally top coated. All stain, & sealer was alykyd based, with poly top. The most popular was Porter products, with the sealer being "Twin Seal".

The most important part was for the trim carp to color match the work. It started with sorting. Then off color was used where it was least seen.
Oil based stains are way more forgiving to work with than water based....just brush on, let stand for maybe a minute, & then wipe down with fresh cotton rags.
Typically two guys could easily knock out a 3,000' home worth of stain in 1/2 day.

Joe

My buddy who's doneva bunch of these back in the 80's and early 90's, says to spray in one room and stack them in another room. He said it's a ton of work just handling the trim 3 or 4 times and of course sanding in between.

I'm going to try and tackle it but thhs job sounds like I need to charge 6-8k just to make a little money. The house is about 1500 square feet, so it's not overly huge.