[BB_TX]

I would not think the living room lights would be on the same switch as the kitchen and hall lights, but you never know. And you would think there would be a switch in the living area for those lights as noted above. But since you can't find any, I guess my next step would be to drop those four lights down to see how (or if) they are wired. Don't disconnect the wiring. It may be that they put in that dummy switch and forgot to go back and wire in a real switch.

I would think the lights would be wired daisy chain; a wire from a power source to one light, jumper to 2nd light, jumper to 3 light, jumper to 4th light. That would mean two wires on the positive terminal on 3 of those lights and a single wire on the last one.The first light having two wires should be the one with one of those wires going to power somewhere. Maybe if you can tell the direction that power wire goes to see if there is a switch somewhere in that direction. If there are two lights in the daisy chain with only one power wire, then that would indicate they did not wire in a power source to them.

Have no idea how they wire ground to those lights. They may have a ground wire from each light to frame ground. Or they may do like the positive wire and have a daisy chain back to the 12 v ground bar, or frame somewhere.

While you have the fixtures down, you can check with a voltmeter to see if you happen to have 12 volts to the lights. It is possible you actually are getting power, but the ground path is broken. You would need to run a long wire from meter ground lead to a good ground source to check for that power.

Good luck.