Dealing with joist cross bracing and projector screen

[shuggy]

I have a modern house with stud walls.
My living room is 22ft x10.5ft with a standard 4 ft window in the narrow wall and conservatory doors at the other end, A chimney breast and gas fire on the west wall and a door on the east wall makes my window end my only viable possibility for installing a projector screen. For SWMBO reasons I need to ceiling recess this, preferably without a pelmet(Costly curtains and tracks). As I have a low ceiling 8ft then there is no depth between the curtain rails and the celing for a well designed pelmet. Though I must say several pelmets on this site look the DBs.
My ceiling void is 20cms so no problems there. My joists run across the narrow span of the room.
The big problem is the central cross bracing on the joists which an old in progress photo of my room shows to run across the middle of the joists from beginning to end.
This generates 4 questions

Has anyone ever removed one of these and used an alternative to gain room for their projector screen? If so did their house fall down

Has anyone mounted a projector lift in similar circumstances?

I see lots of info how to fix a screen to the bottom of a joist but has anyone any experience of mounting to the side?

I intend to cut a hole in the ceiling wide enough for the projector bar and to allow for the narrowing roller effect

Has anyone found a tidy diy method of applying a tidy plastic channel rather than cut plasterboard edges!

[stevelup]

Are you talking about the small noggins between the joists?

Just smash them out of the way. They were there to keep everything square when the house was being built and have no structural relevance.

Steve

[stevelup]

ps. have a look at my thread.

To mount the screen to the side of the joist, I just used the brackets that came with my screen (you could fix them either at the back or on the top).

My hole was finished off with plasterboard beads and then skimmed.

Steve