[brudgers]

VBA for querying (which I'd like to avoid)

Why?

Is this a business reason that has priority over the problems you are trying to solve?

I feel like it's not something that I could implement over a weekend.

Statistically to a significant number of sigmas, it is unlikely you can implement a decent database over a weekend. I'm not saying there are not people who can, but if you were one of them, you probably wouldn't be asking.

Anyway, consultants are an obvious engineering strategy. Good luck.