I've prepped the subfloor so the two rooms are level now. I did not remove the baseboards. In the kitchen because it only has a baseboard in the pantry. And in the dining room I didn't because it is also attached to the living room- which would have meant I either remove the baseboard on the entire floor or pull off enough of the baseboard to trim off enough for the laminate floor and padding. Either way required too much work so I decided to use shoe molding/quarter round.

That leads to my question, I like the idea of painting the quarter round white to match the baseboard, but what about the quarter round that goes against the cabinets and bar? Would it look funny to not paint those and have one side match the baseboard while the other side doesn't match the cabinets? Or I could just leave it as is and match the floor, but I'm afraid if the baseboard trim isn't white, the quarter round will dwarf my tiny baseboard.

http://realwoodfloors.blogspot.com/2010/08/should-i-paint-or-stain-my- trim.html

lt_dan, since you have short baseboards it would look better (IMO) to paint the qtr round on the white baseboard, but stain the qtr round beneath the bar and cabinets to match their wood. I have taller baseboards so I stained the quarter round to match the floor, and then used a different shape trim instead of quarter round under my cabinets, stained to match the cabinets.