I totally agree with you, but unfortunately it's a requirement we have. The page have to work without JS and then show a basic table instead. Because of that everything has to be built in an html-table and then if possible converted to a grid for those users that has javascript enabled.
Your example on how to convert a table to a grid is good, but the grid doesn't have remote paging, filtering and all the other nice features of a grid.
I think it will create a lot of extra work for us, but I just wanted to know if it's something you've encountered before.