Making "unpublished" work w/o Revisioning or live with problematic Access Control views

I've read so much about the issue of access control with workflow, my head is swimming. So, I figured the best approach is to bring forward my problem as a new issue because I haven't found a satisfactory answer in what I have read. If there a direct answer for this somewhere that I missed, please link me to it.

I have a workflow set up that I want to include State 1 and State 2 (to keep it simple). Preferably, in State 1 it is unpublished so the user can edit it with no one seeing. Then, in State 2 it is published and all see. Actions isn't accomplishing this, presumably for some of the reasons I've read about. I have Module Grants installed. I do not want to use Revisioning module on this particular site. Can I accomplish this with Workflow?

IF NOT, I can live with keeping nodes published and using Access Control to accomplished a phantom "unpublished" State 1 for content (whereby State 1 is set to view by author only). HOWEVER, all of my views right now are displaying nodes in State 1 even though the access is set for them to not be displayed. When the view is clicked on, the "Access Denied" message comes up, but that is no good for me because I don't want users to see these nodes. Furthermore, setting up some kind of filter in views for content in a certain workflow state is undesirable because I have a lot of views.