Although I've read through the "css grid isn't meant to do this details", you can get fairly close to this with pure css grid, see here: https://github.com/wesbos/css-grid/blob/master/20%20-%20CSS%...
https://jsfiddle.net/cbjzped2/
The problem with that is that the grid rows are determined dynamically:
.item.v2 {
grid-row: span 2;
}
.item.v3 {
grid-row: span 3;
}
.item.v4 {
grid-row: span 4;
}
.item.h2 {
grid-column: span 2;
}