Thank you all for you input. It sounds like this is MOSTLY a personal preference, but here is my follow up question. My GC is advocating the shoe moulding for the following reason. Our site finished hardwood floors were installed and then the base boards installed over them. Right now, the base boards look wonderful with no gaps between the base board and floor. However, our GC says that in the future, when we sand down and refinished the floors, there will be a gap which will become more pronounced each time the floor is refinished. The advantage to having the shoe moulding is it can be removed, the floors sanded and refinished and then the shoe moulding is put back on, but set a little lower. I suppose the shoe moulding could be added at a later date if the floors are refinished, but for those of you who have site finished hardwoods and no shoe moulding, how do you plan to handle this? TIA again for your input! Jaymie

Thanks everyone! michiganrachel - -Hmmm, vacuum scuffs are virtually guaranteed, but I do like the look...I'll have to check whether magic sponges take those off. rmkitchen & dianalo, I see your point and probably would have gone for the shoemoldingless look (if I had thought about this detail beforehand!) but I think it's too late for me now that the floors are done b/c the boards are not all perfectly abutting the baseboards- - I don't think it's sloppy, but I guess the GC had shoe molding in mind and must've communicated that to the flooring guys. Luckily I'm ok with the shoe molding.

I'd also never heard of using plinths with mitred casings until Casey mentioned it (done differently) in the first response. But I am also not sure it would look so hot. What exactly is making you want to add a base shoe? It seems to me it's creating a whole lot of huge trouble, and I wonder if there isn't an easier way to solve the problem that the base shoe is meant to address. Before you sacrifice every doorway in the house, look at the original problem again and see if there isn't another solution. I'm not a fan of base shoe moulding at all anyway, it makes furniture sit too far from the wall. KarinL

This trim is called a 'mitred return' in terms of stair building. These are made by the same person who makes the treads either on site in pieces then installed or milled up as one piece treads. You can make them by routing the profile then cut to size on mitre/table saw.