Hi there... I am trying to set up a grid... first half has a large image with an item... the second half is divided into 4 parts with images. I would like the article with the most hits to show up in my first grid and I would like second, third, fourth, and fifth highest hits in the next grid. how would I achieve that with k2 items?

The grid can be easily set up from your category's settings.
The same applies to the items image sizes.
Lastly from the same view (category settings) you change the ordering of the items to match your content's needs.

how would I do that? I am trying to get the grid to show up on my homepage, not the category view. I am confused now haha. I am trying to do this through custom html modules

@Lazer Orca

You cannot do this using modules. None of the bundled K2 modules include options for grid. You need to create a menu link to that category. Then go and edit the category in administration and apply the desired grid, images and ordering settings.

do you know if there are free third-party solutions to what I am asking? Somewhere in all of that code, you can get this to work because you can display it in different areas. "?most.popular=top.php something or another" or whatever the code is... I don't understand all of this, but it is somewhere. I'm just seriously struggling with all of the rigidity, but also I am very new to all of this. I don't know where to dive in to learn all of this. I have ideas for what I want, but I don't know how to implement it. I don't even know where to look or have the vocabulary to properly google this stuff.

The K2 Content module can also be overriden. You can use Bootstrap's or Foundation's grid to produce the desired grid layout.

Depending on the count of the item (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc) you have to print a different CSS class.