Electrical – run wire along a finished wall/ceiling in a basement

Like Mike Powell says, I think it's against code to stable wire to the bottom of joists. Regardless of that, there are many reasons not to do that:

• If you ever want to put up drywall, the wires are in the way
• It's ugly

If you're running parallel to joists, staple the wire to the inside of the joist every couple feet. The wire should be at least an inch away from the bottom edge (basically, if you ever cover it with drywall or some other ceiling, you don't want people putting nails etc into the cable).

If you're perpendicular to the joists, drill holes (I generally use a 1/2" spade bit for 14AWG NM), and then run the cable through those.

You should also have a staple within 12" of any bend or entrance to a box.

The type of wire you use depends on what kind of circuit you are attaching to. Go to your electrical box, find the circuit for the current light switch, and read what it is rated for (probably 15 or 20 amps). If it is 15 then you use 14-3 wire. If it is 20 then you need 12-3 wire. The "3" will give you an extra red wire and that will be used to separate your fan and light controls. If you feel that you will have additional electrical work down the road I suggest buying in the 250 feet spools. Wire goes quickly and the smaller samples are pretty costly. You might pay almost half for 25 feet what 250 would cost you.

For the switch you need to simply go to the big box and go in their fan section and they will have a few choices for fan/light combo switches. Just make sure there are two controls on the switch. I just installed the one below and it works well.