Help me figure out why every receptacle in the circuit is dead

First of all, even though I'm not an electrician, I run a home automation, home A/V, etc integration company and did all the electrical for about 150 new fixtures and the entire automation system in my own house, so I'm definitely not a newbie. And my house is for all intents and purposes brand new (it was built in 2010 and sold to us in Sept 2011, and the room I'm having an issue with has been essentially unused since the purchase). Therefore I'd figure there wouldn't be any major wiring problems, and any problems that did exist I'd be able to solve pretty quickly...which is why I'm tearing my hair out over this. Hopefully you guys can offer me a new perspective because I'm out of ideas. So anyway this is the problem: There are five receptacles in the formal living room of the house, and none of them are receiving power. In addition, the outdoor GFCI on the covered porch which shares a wall with the living room also is not receiving power (and so obviously it won't reset). Further info/troubleshooting I've already performed: - The receptacles in the interior three rooms that share a wall with the living room all work fine, and the other outdoor GFCIs work fine as well. -The lights are receiving power in the living room, which isn't surprising since the entire house seems to keep the lights for any given zone on a separate circuit from the receptacles in the same zone (but I just finished installing additional lighting and replacing the rest of the fixtures in the room, and as I was doing that I discovered that the line from the wall switch to the chandelier had been illegally spliced inside the wall about a foot up from the junction box (the splice wasn't in a junction box), and broke loose as I was running new lines, so I wouldn't be surprised if something similar is happening with the outlets).