I'm slowly converting my carpet to laminate flooring. My kitchen has linoleum in it for now, and it has two entranceways (no doors or frames) between it and the living room; it's a modular home. I am going to replace the carpet in the living room with laminate flooring.

Since the laminate floor will be a good 1/4"higher than the linoleum in the kitchen, how do you handle the spot where the flooring switches to laminate? Are you supposed to rip the baseboards to be that much shorter for the entire living room?

I am strongly considering replacing all the trim in my house since it's a modular and I'd like to get baseboard trim that can easily be replaced if it gets damaged, rather than whatever the modular home company used (which may or may not be available at any given time).

Generally you don't move or cut the baseboards unless the height difference is really great. You go with a two piece trim pattern that has a baseboard, and then a 1/4-round toe-kick. That way only the 1/4-round has to be moved/futzed with.

So I'd move the baseboards in the kitchen (with the linoleum) up to match the level of the baseboard above the laminate, and install quarter-round on all of it, moving it down a bit in the kitchen?

Sounds like you got it, the shoe mold will cover the small gap in the kitchen.

Either that or step it down by cutting a parallelogram of trim with your miter saw.  So in other words, the trim will look like the top slants down and the sides are vertical | | .  This can look ok or it can look like total crap, but it only takes 5 minutes to cut a piece and see how it comes out.

Yes.  This looks much better than just adding 1/4 round in one place.  1/4 round is usually a last resort for me.

I would run the baseboard at the height of the living room throughout. Slap the 1/4 round on and call it a day. You will have the height differnece in the 1/4 round at the transition point(s) if you can live with that.

Pretty much unless the sub floor is perfectly flat under the laminate you won't be able to get away without using 1/4 round anyways.

I guess the smart thing to do is to get a few pieces of the trim and mock it up to see which way you like it better.

The other option is to use 3/4" 1/4 round and rip 1/4" off the bottom of the pieces that will go in the living room.