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It's pretty common to want to replace a regular light fixture with a ceiling fan. The only issue is that a ceiling fan often weighs more than a builder-grade light fixture. The last thing you want to happen is for your new ceiling fan to fall out of the ceiling in the middle of the night. It's a good idea to install a brace bar.
A brace bar in placed in the ceiling and spans the opening by pinning itself into the sides of the ceiling joist. To install one, you have to remove the old junction box in the ceiling, after you make sure the power is off. The electrical cable (romex) will be held in the box by a cable clamp. After you free the cable, the box will need to be removed. It will be screwed or nailed in place, and sometimes the easiest way to remove it is to run a recuperating saw blade around the perimeter of the box to free it.
Use a stud finder to locate the direction of the ceiling joists and insert the bar into the hole in the ceiling. Once it's in the ceiling, turn it perpendicular to the joists and start turning the shaft. As you turn the shaft, the legs telescope out until they push into the side of the joists. They have little spikes that wedge into the wood. Just make sure that when you tighten it, the shaft is located directly over the hole in the ceiling.
Once the brace bar is installed, hook the "U" bolt over the bar and secure the junction box to it after you run the cable through the box. Then it is a simple matter of installing a ceiling fan to your brace bar.
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