Product Browser/Search refinement plugin?

I’ve been scouring for a while now to find an answer to this need for an advanced product browser.

I want to accomplish something in the style of this:
http://guilfordofmaine.com/swatches
The Idea is you can set attributes to products (or anything really), and have a set of buttons under certain umbrella attributes that, when selected, will display all relevant products. The purpose is to allow customers to find exactly what kind of, in this case, fabric they want to purchase through a refinement process.

I’m not terribly comfortable in programming languages, but I’m able to learn. I’d just rather not hard code thousands of lines of JS, jQuery, and CSS if there’s a plugin, or something similar available.

What leads me to believe there is some kind of plugin/creator for a refiner such as this read the .js page on that example’s external sheet, and had found the coding so compressed that it had to have some kind of automated process handling it.

I’m curious if there actually is anything that could help in creating something like this.

Thank you in advanced for your help!