A permanent masonry pier should be installed to support all splicesand cuts in the sill and a drop sill should be installed to support all spliced joists unless the new joists arerun from sill to sill.

We immediately set about renovating that apartment.At this same time another of his buildings deals fell through- a 4 plex, old masonry building... we did a walk through.

It's a great price but it's on an unreinforced masonry (brick foundation).

I despise old masonry buildings but it sounds like you are dealing with something far beyond a "cosmetic" problem.We had a lot of structural beams supported by the brick walls that we sistered and supported from beneath.

He doesn't get why he has to talk to the masonry guy, even though I am the one that wants the job done a specific way.

Ty BurnsWhen you say "ugly brick siding" do you mean the house has a brick veneer (true brick wall built outside the frame) or it has a masonry siding textured to look like stone or brick?

I have seen this before, with people from the South insisting that clapboard siding is second-rate, and that masonry is always and everywhere to be preferred.  

Add visual height and presence to that same window simply by using 1x4 on the sides (jambs) and 1x8 at the head and sill.Modular LayoutLots of building materials and construction methods are based on a 2-4' module (sheet goods, framing, masonry, finish materials, nailing patterns).

Some areas of the US have deals where you can purchase electricity in middle of the night as long as you have a storage medium (they make special electric heaters with masonry storage for reasonable costs) for a very reduced cost for the electricity.  

Large, transverse cracks are the larger worry, as they are more likely caused by differential settlement in your foundation (the soil underneath a portion of your foundation wall dropping, while the rest stays more or less where you want it - look for a "stair-step" pattern in your mortar joints), water trapping against (or worse, inside) the wall and expanding during the winter freeze cycles, or insufficient steel reinforcement - which is not uncommon with concrete masonry, particularly if the house is pre-1950s (ish).