“I wanted to create a village”, says Betty Coates with a laugh, describing Villa Estrella Mar, the gleaming house she and husband Nick designed on a private beach south of Puerto Vallarta, on of Mexico’s most popular travel destinations.

Nick, a property developer in Aspen, Colorado, where the couple maintains another residence, had completed a small group of homes in the coastal town, and they lived in one of them.  “Then on day he came home with a present,” Betty recalls.  “He had bought a house on the ocean.  I knew which one it was, but I had never been inside.  It was a disaster.  We ended up tearing it down, saving some of the foundation and starting over.”

What gradually took shape over many months was the result of a collaborative effort.  “Betty and I designed the house as we went along by drawing sketches of it in the sand on the beach,” Nick explains.  Their efforts were aided by a friend from Puerto Vallarta who joined them in the project.  “Peter Bowman has great taste,” Betty says.  “The three of us make a team.  While Nick and I came and went, Peter was invaluable in both supervising the project and designing many architectural details.”

At the end of two years, the home the Coateses had envisioned was complete.  “Nick and I have five children between us, so we built not only for the two of us but for our families and friends.  As it turns out, a number of people from Aspen have brought property here, so there is quite a group of us.”

The house and its two guest cottages-the “village”-offer graceful accommodations to twelve guests in rooms that were decorated by Betty.  “For many years I had my own interior design firm in Kansas City.  Even though I am retired, design is something I still enjoy-I love antiques.  Nick and I have driven all over Mexico and Guatemala, and we collected pieces from special places like Peubla and San Miguel de Allende to ship back to Puerto Vallarta.”

One vintage piece, a stone star from Morelia, is set in to an arch about the entrance gate to greet visitors to the five-story house looking out on the Bay of Banderas.  The residence is distinctive I many way, but one of its most unexpected features is the absence of glass in the windows.  “There are no screen either,” Betty says.  “We don’t have problems with insects here, so we could leave everything open to the breeze and the view.  When we do want to close off a room to the sun. We shut the wooden louvers that were made by Fernando Sanchez, a wonderful local carpenter who built all of our cabinets and outdoor furniture.  We were so fortunate to find the craftsmen we did.  For instance, one of the problems of being this close to the ocean is that everything rusts.  If we had used metal railing on the decks it would have been like maintaining the Brooklyn Bridge:  repainting every year.  So we designed railing of cement poured in fiberglass molds, and made them to order on the site.”

Interior spaces take ease of maintenance into consideration with polished tile floors, textured wall surfaces, sturdy cotton fabrics and an abundance of wicker.  During the day the view dominates, but at night soft lighting warms the interiors like a welcoming abrazo-embrace.  And Villa Estrella Mar truly becomes a star of the sea."