Staining Trim Boards Sucks!

I have been staining trim boards all week. I hate it! Ask yourself do I really want to use stain? Paint would be sooo much easier.
I started out with 3 inch pine boards. I do not like actual trim boards. They are too fancy for me. I picked the best side of the boards and sanded them with a fine sandpaper.
Well then I thought, where am I going to stain these at? I didn't want to put them up and then do it. I knew if I did that, then I would end up with drippy stain running down my wall. So I decided to stain them before I put them up. Another problem, where would I put them to stain them? I ended up laying them all out on the floor. I did this in the room that I have been working on. So it really didn't matter if I got some on the floor. I am laying carpet in that room this weekend. But, I thought where would someone do this if they didn't have a room like this? Anyhow, so when I first started staining them it was working okay. Then I was running out of room. The boards took up almost all of the floor space. So there wasn't much space for me to be able to put the stain on. I ended up holding them up and staining the sides first and then doing the front after. It has taken forever. I have been working on them for 5 days. I am just starting with the poly. The poly is hard to see when the boards are flat on the floor. I can't tell if I am getting any runs or not.
If I lived in any other house, I definitely would have used paint. That way I could put them up first and then taped off my wall and just gone to town on them. But unfortunately, in my house painted trim boards would have looked really dumb.