If you're worried about building an application to maintain a bunch of tables you shouldn't be. Just use a code generator to build the application. You don't have to go all "object oriented" for basic data maintenance. You can build a good set of stored procedures and generic application components to achieve the generic nature of the data while still maintaining good database design.

It's not difficult to build the maintenance UI but it is boring, tedious, and repetitive. Those are the things that should scream code generation in your head. The generic table solution may sound neat at first but it would be a nightmare for someone new coming in to maintain the application.